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American Inner City
I had hoped that many of them from that block, the ones I knew anyway, would become like ideas dredged from dreams, not odious but unrealistic, like nothing in the world they inhabited, that they would be retards, geeks, not cool at all, baton-twirling, toe-tapping freaks, not the least bit cool, not at all in synch with the beat of the street; they could wear suits and deliver bibles door to door or they could have nasal twangs and say yessir and no sir. It would be neat, really neat, if they could have gotten roughed up at school and come home crying with gold stars pasted to their foreheads. I wish they had not the talent to blend in so well, had no friends, had no sense of community, were aliens. I wish they weren't so smart, so proud, so good-looking, so strong, surviving by rote, the credo, kill or be killed. But hoping is a past time of luxury and it didn't turn out that we were dreaming the same dream. Instead they became dark super heroes, mini-gods, suave, silky-moving monsters. The beautiful thing is there is no one to blame, we don't have to take responsibility, we are profoundly dumbfounded by the simple, permanent truth of it. They are what we are and never wrong. They are the mirror of a good day, and the bad. There are no motives and there are no suspects.