This fall Mohamed worked as an Alumni Coordinator with South Bronx United to help design SBU’s alumni services, to help its alumni succeed beyond their high school graduation. He built the framework for their first career mentorship program. Mohamed wrote this poem about his experience with SBU.
We have begun to rewrite the story
of the inner city
with some teens from the South Bronx,
reaching from the poverty line
for the middle class,
with their public-school education.
It is a story I have come to know
like mine, like seeds uprooted from home
to become political in the United States.
It is a story of rainy days in a food desert;
a story about youth left to their own
to make right turns with their mobile devices;
a story of bodega fronts,
where O heads drift to a song
called: TRAUMA,
known to:
Tyron,
Raheem,
Antonio,
Umar,
Mohamed,
Aïcha—
Inner city kids longing for a path
from their street corners to the corners
of white cubicles on wall street.
In high school we woke up in the same shoes:
Timberland boots on thin ice.
Our lessons were learned in different area codes,
but we returned home in the same state:
Depressed.
I ran away from the neighbor[hood]
with a big dream catcher
in my hand,
to find myself away from the people
whose lives made mine.
So…
I ended up home.
Only this time
I bought a pen and paper
to draw new avenues of hope on the block
I lent a helping hand to pull our gifted
from the mud of poverty
in the richest nation on Earth.
I wrote a few lines of reconciliation—
one for every young man
who ended up on a cardboard box,
surrounded candles lights
and brick walls,
where violence bloomed
in opulus and roses;
one for every recreation session
in the school yard
that led to years of detention
in penitentiaries up state;
one for every dreamer
who remained asleep
one for the stars who,
by oppression, became too high
to be seen
to be wished upon by my generation.
We write this story to water the soil,
to plant new seeds
in institutions of higher learning
so they may grow new trees,
of all hues,
to shade our collective tomorrow.
The story is an incantation of the brave,
who leap with faith,
where doubt lurks in darkness,
because ahead might just be a bulb on a string,
dangling over a well of new beginnings.