Not long ago, I did a podcast interview with @TheatreArtLife chatting about how I got to where I am today. I wrote an article titled "The Art of Perseverance" for their website, which speaks to my own personal experiences from a child on through to adulthood and how believing in oneself, even through doubt and pain, can lead to success and real happiness. Besides that, though, I was also inspired to create a poem that put those words into a different, more artistic, format...
I lived in LA, the city of Angels
As many would say
Just at the cusp
where people would play
To escape gangs and violence
To get far away
A gateway to hope, to a future
They’d pray
But just over the freeway
A few blocks from us
Shots would ring out
The tough would still roam
For the end of that street was too close to home
The pain and the rampage
Was not kept at bay
My family absorbed it, it came everyday
Their spirit too weak to just push it away
My Uncles from prison with us they would stay
The smell of their crimes
The stench of decay
Murder and mayhem
Assault and more pain
Filled our house with their habits
No remorse nor repay
My parents indulged it
They partook much the same
Their anger and rituals
Put blood on my face
The stress of just seeing them
Caused trauma and strain
What happens today?
Am I good or so bad?
My mind always raced
With what awaited that place
The violence persisted
It stayed there
It lay
My family inherited
This horrible fate
So I kept to myself
In my room I would stay
Writing and painting
My mind would replace
All the violence and horrors
With my own sweet soirées
I wiped back my tears
As they dried on my face
I did what I could
To elude their embrace
I created my own world
My own perfect space
My mind would just wander
Places far and away
This boy with the pain
Was committed to stay
So now I look back
At the bullies and blood
All the hurt and the horror
The anguish and strain
I replaced all the bad
With love and quatrains
My spirit is firm
My mind is now set
One way or another
I’ve had no regrets
I now am successful
I create and I thrive
That boy that existed
Who might have just died
He lives and he laughs
He loves and he plays
He consistently grasps
All the pain everyday
What was so much sickness
What had to have been
Created no monster
But made him again...
- Jameel Haiat