A Child Was Born!

 

A child was born, dark as night,
and sent out into the world.
Everywhere he turned,
such insults, people hurled.

He took this all in stride,
grew up and became a man.
Took one look at his skin,
it was darker than a tan.

On a mountaintop, he stood,
looking out on a sea of hate.
He decided that once and for all,
he’d be the master of his own fate.

He had been followed for many a day,
even when he’d stopped to rest.
He thought he’d never feel secure,
knew that to him, this was a test.

God, they said, loved him
and he believed it for awhile.
He carried with him, a Bible.
 It was evidence at his trial.

You see this man, he finally snapped
on a hot, sunny day in June.
One insult was one too many,
a white man called him, a baboon.

He took his Bible in his hand
and he beat that white man good.
His blood did fill the pages,
it soaked right through his hood.

The Klan, they’d met their match.
Hate finally beat out love.
And the moral of this story?
A man will push back when he’s shoved.

Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2017 Shelby I. Courtland

Now remember, you read it here first. Black people are seriously starting to get fed up with white folks’ bullshit and there is going to come a day of reckoning. So, please continue to treat us like shit and you’ll find yourselves wondering what the hell! Keep your hatred coming and soon we will forget about all of those fake-assed fairy tales your ancestors got us listening to about the Buybull, Jebus Christ and some more religious shit. We are going to stop with the preachyfying and get with the program that we are going to ‘stand our ground’ and ain’t nobody’s day gonna be sunny when that happens. It ain’t here yet, but by all the sinners in church, itsa coming.

Death!

Death, is not a sweet kiss,
nor is it a deep, gentle sigh.
Death, is a struggle for life,
but we lose… and so we die.

Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2017 Shelby I. Courtland

I cannot recall how many times I have heard, “He was in his death throes.” And they have been defined as “sudden violent movements that people sometimes make when they are dying.”

The will to live is so strong, but death will have the ‘final’ say.

We Celebrate Memorial Day!

We celebrate Memorial Day in honor of blood spilled.
And we stand silently by and watch those coffins, filled
with the bodies of dead soldiers who once knew joy
but then lined up as though they were a tin soldier toy.

We take this day to solemnly give thanks and praise
to those who willingly reduced on this earth, their numbered days.
What a wonder it is to be alive and to show our gratitude
while those who served this country lie in glorious solitude.

As we head to the store to buy flags made in Vietnam
to bestow upon the grave of the sacrificial lamb,
we honor the memory of every unknown soldier
by giving him a neighbor to lie beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

Why should we cease to inscribe names on yet another wall,
since it is so easy to produce another soldier to heed war’s call?
No, we must never truly show our gratitude for our war weary dead,
and to those whose body lives while their mind died instead.

So, eat your hotdogs and your apple pie and wave your flag
while another soldier is soon to be placed in a body bag.

Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2017 Shelby I. Courtland

And here we go again! Taking a day to honor our war dead while still at war and so what have we learned? Not a goddamn thing! Monday, Trump’s depraved ass will solemnly place a wreath at the tomb of ‘The Unknown’ soldier; ‘The Unknowns’. And just which soldier did he know? What soldier did Obama or Bush know, either Bush, for that matter? Trump, after having just recently dropped the Mother Of All Bombs on Afghanistan and declared that more soldiers are necessary to fight some bogeymen that the U.S. trained and/or caused to be unleashed on the Middle East by way of the CIA will ‘borrow’ some dignity from somewhere just long enough to get through the hypocritical ceremony of the placing of the wreath. And then, it’s off to golfing and ordering some Big Macs.

Oh, how we really mean it when we “Thank a service man/woman for their service to this country” while we continue to add to their numbers because hardly any of us know a soldier who got him/herself killed in the line of ‘duty’ because it has always been some poor schmuck who was too dumb to understand that he’s still poor after having signed his life away and for what? Not a goddamn thing! Food stamps, a gun, a backpack and a flag to drape over his coffin. Yeah! Now, go eat your hot dog! Celebrate!

“Poverty Is A State Of Mind!” Said Housing And Urban Development Chief, Ben Carson

Poverty is a state of mind
because what does it really matter
to Trump’s new housing chief
who is really the Mad Hatter?

You can’t fool yourself into believing
that your hunger pangs aren’t real.
You just keep telling yourself over and over
that on your empty plate is a meal.

The thing about mind over matter
is that it really doesn’t work.
When you lose your job and home,
Ben Carson is gonna smirk.

You see, it’s really funny to him,
he who has no brains at all
that your mind can’t make you rich
like that brain dead Neanderthal.

But what really takes the cake
is that this fool is the head of HUD.
He’s responsible for housing the poor,
I guess in houses made of mud.

This supposedly brilliant brain surgeon
says that “poverty is a state of mind.”
How in the hell did he operate on brains
when he is so obviously blind?

Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2017 Shelby I. Courtland

“I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind,” said HUD Secretary Ben Carson.

For the love of !!!!! Let me get this straight. If I lose my ‘good’ paying $7.25 an hour minimum wage job at Micky Ds because of automation and I told my landlord that I’m really not of a mind to be poverty stricken and homeless and so could he please accept my ‘great state of mind’ as payment for rent due, who in unholy hell thinks that my ass would not be sitting out on the streets in no time flat??!!!

If I lost my ‘great’ paying job at GM due to robotics taking the job and I could no longer afford the mortgage on my house, how about I go to the bank and tell them that I’m not of a mind to be poor and homeless and so could I just ‘bank’ on that mindset to get me to be able to stay in my home? What the hell is the banker going to say to that? “Get the hell out of my office with that bullshit and start packing!” That’s what the banker is going to say.

What the hell is wrong with us when we can hear this type of tripe and there not be an uproar? It is already bad enough that I’ve had to hear of Donald Trump’s budget proposal that guts food stamps, Medicaid and he’s even going after the disabled which should surprise no one seeing as how he made fun of the disabled on the campaign trail. But as usual, the apathetic and complacent Americans just sit back and wait until the shit hits the fan for their ass in particular in order to get to wailing and moaning. And we had the nerve just a few months ago to post some shit about, “When first they came for the Muslims, but I wasn’t a Muslim and blah, blah, blah…” And now, they’ve come for the food insecure, the sick and disabled and what are we doing about it? The usual. Not a goddamn thing, the apathetic and complacent shits we are! GEEZUS Goddamn Christ, I fucking give!!!

Oh and before I forget, Ben Carson also stated that people who have to make use of HUD public housing and Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers should “not live comfortably!” Believe me, they are doing anything but. And I have the pictures to prove it!

This was the result of a serious roof leak. I toured this apartment complex and 6 roofs caved in and management did not evacuate the people in the affected apartments because who the fuck cares about those people? These people did not have a ceiling left. But I suppose in the eyes of Ben Carson, this HUD Section 8 apartment was still too comfortable.

The leak in this apartment was so bad, the carpets had to be removed and the tenants had placed buckets down to capture the water. But of course, this is ‘comfortable living’, according to HUD Secretary Ben Carson

 

This is what was left of the sink and the kitchen. The pipe. Real ‘comfortable’ isn’t it? I’d want to live here! I’m sure Ben Carson would.

Great ceiling lighting. Not much ‘mood’ lighting. But who needs to be ‘comfortable’?

Here, we have ants coming from a panel in the hallway. ‘Comfortable’ living for ants anyway.

This ceiling leak is in a bathroom. You can ‘comfortably’ take your shower or bath knowing that the upstairs tenant’s filthy bath water could cascade down on you at any time. This feature will never appear in ‘Better Homes And Gardens’. For sure!

 

Does your bathtub come with a ladder? This one does. Will this bathroom get featured in ‘Better Homes And Gardens’? Never fucking mind. We ALL know the answer to that one! Fuck Ben Carson!

So, there you have it folks, ‘comfortable living’ as established by HUD Secretary, Ben Carson. He’s ALL heart, don’t cha know! Each picture here was taken in a HUD approved housing complex of some sort. Each had passed inspection and was deemed safe, sanitary and decent. This is what is considered living extremely well to the point of being ‘too goddamn comfortable’ by Ben ‘asshole’ Carson’ Fuck that house negro!

Sirens Are Our Lullabies!

Shots ring out every night
in this city gushing blood.
And in daylight, it’s the same,
awash in a crimson flood.

Sirens are our lullabies;
a crime scene, our parade.
We stand and stare at the dead,
then into a grave, they are laid.

None of it makes any sense,
Black men killing their own kind.
And I just make excuses
as though to reality, I am blind.

I blamed it all on poverty;
a lack of jobs and single moms.
And I threw in for good measure
that so many are bearing arms.

I thought I had all the answers.
Open a store or two in the hood
that catered to the poor,
but that won’t do us any good.

What is needed, I don’t know.
I throw my hands up in the air.
Our murder rate is off the charts.
And it would seem that we don’t care.

Another day, another murder.
And sometimes, more than one.
We’re just mowing each other down,
and hell, there ain’t nowhere to run.

More babies without fathers,
more mothers without their sons
because we have lost our minds,
 when to solve our problems, we use guns.

Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2017 Shelby I. Courtland

‘Did you hear that?’: Amid Baltimore’s surge in killings, a faint cry in a locked car

BALTIMORE — No one saw the baby.

She sat in a gold-hued car with tinted black windows as her 26-year-old father lay on the ground outside, dying.

All eyes were on him, another fallen body in a city increasingly defined by them.

In portions of Baltimore, the strobe of police cars is as much a part of the landscape as boarded-up homes. But the pace of the killings this year has been stunning as the city struggles to recover from rioting in 2015. As of Friday, 124 people had been slain, including five on a recent day, making Baltimore’s homicide rate one of the highest in the country. It is more than triple Washington’s rate and higher than the homicide rates in New Orleans and Chicago, two places that have become national symbols of gun violence.

I came to this city, not with expectations of having everlasting fun, but with the hope that there was something I could do to help in a city that claimed my heart over a decade ago. And now, I am beyond frustrated. If I told you all that has happened to me since I’ve been here, you’d all wonder why I have not thrown myself into the nearest psych ward and wrapped my own ass in a wrap-around jacket. I have been carjacked, almost robbed at gun point on a city bus, my cousin was shot two months after arriving here and I am terrified to leave my own neighborhood. I am already preparing to leave this city. I have not seen anything like this. I guess when I was here before, I was young and fearless, but now that I am older and damn near completely incapacitated thanks to injuries, I look at things differently and I am absolutely horrified at what I see. This city is off the chain. I ask myself all the time, “What was I thinking?” And if you read the article, a statement by a former Baltimore planning director tells it all.

“People don’t realize it’s worse than Chicago,” said Otis Rolley, former Baltimore planning director and a onetime mayoral candidate. His 23-year-old nephew, Andrew Zachary, a former Marine, was the 15th person killed in the city this year. “This man was trained by the U.S. government and had the skills and ability to survive in a combat situation overseas but was unable to navigate the streets of Baltimore. And that is a scary, scary thing.”

There is no need to suit up and head to Iraq or Afghanistan to see some combat action, just come to Baltimore. You’ll get more ‘action’ than you bargained for, believe me! Baltimore is a warzone! Helicopters fly overhead, non-stop. Sirens are non-stop. It is not even safe to take public transit. It is not safe to drive. It is not safe to walk down the street. It is not safe to peep out your window. For the love of !!!!!

It’s Been Four Years

You were mother’s favorite from the day you were born
and then from her arms, thanks to crack, you were torn.
I was jealous of you since I thought you had it all.
You were so smart and so beautiful; a Cinderella at the ball.

In your band uniform and with your saxophone ready
you marched out on that field amidst loud cheers and confetti.
Voted ‘gold brick’ girl, your sense of humor stole the show.
You were brilliant at everything until to crack, you couldn’t say, “No!”

It shortened your beautiful life and destroyed who you were.
After you became addicted, the rest of your life was just a blur.
You stole and you lied and we did not know what to do.
Your family threw their hands up, we all gave up on you.

Four years you’ve been gone and how the time did fly.
And I never got the chance to say to you, “Goodbye!”
I hear the mournful wail of a saxophone playing.
It would be from you if I could bring you back by praying!

Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2017 Shelby I. Courtland

I cannot believe that it’s been another year since my sister’s death on May 6, 2013. For those of you who are new to this blog, my sister died from a crack overdose.
She was the most talented and beautiful person I’ve ever known. I sit here, writing this, with tears streaming down my face because my sister had it all except for the ability to give up the crack pipe. I have never known anyone who had her smarts. There was nothing she could not do except get off crack. And I just don’t understand nor can I seem to accept how someone who was as brilliant as she was is dead from crack. Her brain was a computer. I’ve said this before and I say it again, there was no mathematical equation or computation that she couldn’t do as fast as a computer. She never had to open a book; she just knew the answers and even her college roommate was jealous of her because my sister never opened a book and yet aced every exam. Walked out of the classroom a few minutes after entering it with her exam completed. She excelled at music, cooking, math, history, English, art; everything! But crack was her Achilles heel. Beside her, my other sister and myself are kindergarten rejects and I wish I was kidding. She never married, had no children, was the youngest and yet, she is dead!

My sister, I mourn you still!!

We Are Voiceless!

I threw myself into the fray.
I said, “I will persevere, come what may.”
Little did I know that I was to throw in the towel
so soon as I exit this stage with a scowl.

I added my voice to the billions who yearn
for a change to take place, but we never learn.
We are voiceless in the midst of this screaming crowd,
speaking to no one though our voices are loud.

Oh, how little and insignificant we are,
though we hate to admit this truth by far.
I talk at you while you talk back at me,
and nothing gets done in this virtuality.

I am part of a chorus that will never be heard.
I exit this stage, distance myself from the herd.
What language I speak, gets lost in translation.
 And with that being said, I tender my resignation.

I never had anything of significance to say.
And so into my pillow, at night I shall bray.
It will do just as well as what is said to you now.
We’re all preaching to the choir and it don’t matter no how.

Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2017 Shelby I. Courtland

I wrote this poem because a fellow blogger I used to ‘follow’ decided that he was not doing anything of significance by blogging and that he was only adding to the problem. I, myself, have felt this way so often, there are poems to that effect all over this blog. When I first started blogging, I was full of inspiration and enthusiasm because I was mostly blogging to bring awareness of those who are also voiceless; the homeless. I thought I had something of significance to say and I also thought, “Oh what the hell? I shall add my voice to countless other voices out there!” But I also  wonder, “What is it all for?” Am I wasting my time? Yes, I’m pretty much wasting my time. Although, I will admit that I have learned a few things from blogging. I have also taken away from it, that people can often be close-minded, uninformed or simply misinformed and even outright stubborn and stuck in their ways. By reading the stories of others, I have in essence, changed in some ways and in other ways, I don’t think I ever will. It is human nature, I guess to want to be right and to also not want to believe that you could be wrong and that because you could be wrong, that maybe you should take a look deep into why you think you could be wrong and either rationalize it or consider that you are not as open-minded as you would like to believe you are; that you are not as willing to accept people for who and what they are as you think you are. I have condemned people based solely on my own narrow way of thinking and that is wrong. I was taught that unless a person does something to hurt me personally, I have no right to judge that person by my so-called moral code or to hold them up to what I deem to be right and good and decent and cut them down for not thinking or living the way I do.

There is much that I can work on and I intend to. But I would also like to think that through this blog, I have given folks an inkling into what makes me, me. And that good or bad, I try in many ways to become a better person. Will I succeed? I can but try.

War Never Takes A Holiday

Another government shutdown looms
and with it clouds of mushroom plumes.
Can you smell the toxic fumes
that reek of death, mankind it dooms?

Bombs away! Look lively there!
Behold the rocket’s bright red glare,
as soldiers stand, salute and stare,
no thought for a mother or child she’d bear.

Duty calls and they obey.
War never takes a holiday.
My child, your child; both will pay
for peace will always to war, give way.

And though we think we are immune
here at home, war will come soon.
You’ll pay the piper for this tune.
No Star Spangled Banner will you croon.

Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2017 Shelby I. Courtland

Here in the land of the stupid and the brain dead, and it should go without saying that I am speaking of America, we go about our business as usual. Government shutdowns are threatened as congress plays the same tired old game of supposedly shutting down a government that doesn’t work anyway. So what’s to shut down? I don’t know because nothing that is ever good comes out of the halls of congress or the White House. And inside both chambers sits the useless, the deranged and the greedy bastards who are owned; lock stock and barrel by the very corporations that also run our lives. We have certainly given up on any pretense that we have a say over any aspect of our lives. What we eat is owned by nine corporations. What entertainment we still thirst for is owned by a handful of corporations who feed us what we see and hear.

I read just the other day that Trump’s poll numbers soared after he gave the order to launch 59 missiles at Syria and when he also ordered the MOAB(Mother Of All Bombs)to be dropped on Afghanistan. And now, we anxiously await his orders to drop bombs on North Korea. Well, just sit back and think that this will have no impact on US and you’re in for a rude awakening. Regardless of whether or not you think that Kim Jong Un is crazy has no relevance on what is going down. Donald Trump is just as crazy and yet, this nutcase has his finger on the ‘red boom-boom’ button. The war chickens are coming home to roost up your ass, AmeriKKKans and I sure hope you like it hot; hot and funky ’cause you’re going to smell the fallout from your living rooms and from your spa hideaways and your luxurious hotel suites. The claim is that when you fly for 7 hours, you are subjected to what amounts to an x-ray. Well, that’ll be the least of your worries, but then you’ve never considered how much radiation you’re subjecting your body to when before you are even allowed to board a plane, you must first be radiated and those of you who are frequent flyers, well…let’s just say that you are already a cancer ticking time bomb. But no worries for you because just as soon as your son and your husband, cousin, father, brother and nephew start sending nuclear missiles to North Korea, you can thank them for what they’re about to set off up your ass because you’ve been lucky thus far but your luck is about to run out. And about time, I’d say.

So, you thank Donald Trump, you damn warmongers for killing your ass via your own sons and husbands, but the last thing you will be applauding is Trump’s rising poll numbers as you watch AmeriKKKa get what she has so long been begging for, war at our front door! I’m placing big bets on this and my money is backing Kim Jong Un! Bring it!

War, The Birth Of Death!

I was born old with the sounds of war
roaring through my head
and of scenes depicting
the fact that I am dead.

I am as old as war,
never to know peace
only sorrow, pain
and a cease fire that will not cease.

Brought forth in death
by man’s insatiable desire
to kill for profit and for pain
and war is my sire.

Though I may not have lines
or wrinkles on my forehead
nevertheless, I am old,
too old to live and so I die, instead.

War, the birth of death;
 for youth is drained and tired
but must fight to die;
as war’s bitter taste is acquired.

Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2017 Shelby I. Courtland

And so it goes, our children are born but why? They are born, dead for their bodies are mere pawns in wars, moved here and there on the chessboard of war, driven to war by war hawks and warmongers whose children grow rich and fat off the sacrifices of our children who are bred for their wars. We willingly give our children to be adopted by the warmongers and then we host parades praising them for taking our children and making them dead and/or old beyond their years. The voices in their heads, never leaving them even if they leave the battlefield and if they come back to us, it is in name only, for they are already dead since war is the birth of death.

An Ice Cream Truck

Just before the sun went down,
I heard the jingle from an ice cream truck.
Here, it is business as usual,
but in Afghanistan, a bomb just struck.

Tomorrow, the ice cream truck
will make its way down my tree-lined street.
But over in bomb-struck Syria,
little children have no bread to eat.

The next day, the ice cream truck
will once again offer cold, creamy treats
while we wait to hear from Donald Trump
about North Korea via his stupid tweets.

Another day, another ice cream truck;
an absurdity in a world at war.
 It would seem to be quite laughable,
but I just cry til I can’t no more.

I’d send you an ice cream truck,
if I thought it would do you any good,
but when you’re fleeing a war torn land
there’s only debris where homes once stood.

One day, that ice cream truck
will drive down my street no more.
We’ll have killed those across the sea
and on our own, we will then wage war.

That day will surely come,
since war is all we know.
And though we killed you first,
where you went, we too shall go.

So to those who lust for war,
and who gloat over all we’ve killed,
the treats in an ice cream truck
are not as cold as your heart so chilled.

Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2017 Shelby I. Courtland

At around 8:00pm, the ice cream truck jingles its way down my street and I look out down the street and the children are gathering in front of it with their money in hand which they exchange for cold, creamy treats. I cannot help but think of the children in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen who have been killed by bombs dropped on them by our government via the U.S. military. I cannot wrap my head around the fact that soldiers, who have children, can send missiles to foreign lands knowing that there is no way to hit only fixed targets since we all know that ‘collateral damage’ is inevitable in military operations and that they are killing children while expecting only ‘ice cream truck’ experiences for their own. Their children are never to be ‘collateral damage’, otherwise known as the unintended casualties of war. I am sure that the ‘unintended casualties’ of war are most glad to know that they were mortally wounded, accidental like by America’s soldiers who want only ice cream truck encounters for their children. I am sure that those who were blown to bits died knowing that they were just in the way; in the wrong place at the wrong time. There will be no ice cream truck rolling down the street offering them cold, creamy treats; just body bags for those who are more than just bits and pieces.

But here in America, the ice cream trucks are still rolling down our streets, inviting our children to come and pick their favorite cold treat and go happily back to their yards to play while those in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen are praying that the bombing will stop, wishing that they still had homes to go to, trying to remember what it felt like to play and certainly are not hearing the jingle of an ice cream truck as it makes its way down a tree-lined street on a quiet evening inviting them to partake of its cold delights.

I am going to keep this one civil even though I am seething and ready to spontaneously combust over the fact that all is quiet here and there is only the echo of the jingle from an ice cream truck and I cannot know or appreciate the hell that those in foreign lands are being put through thanks to those who are hell bent on making it a fact that this world will never know peace. Oh, the absurdity of an ice cream truck!