I’ll Take You To The Ghetto Poem by Thomas Duncky

I will take you to the ghetto
Now, listen carefully before we go
Never ever on any day go there alone, without me
The ghetto is friendly to visitors but it can be fatal to strangers
It’s loyal only to those who are so to it

I will take you on a ride to another part of life
You see these dusty paths mistakenly called roads?
This is the way to go on your way to ghetto land
Tar marked roads are legends heard in folklores here
Don’t mind how you dress the place is ready for however you dress
For everyone eats dust in that place

I’ll not take you out to eat
In fashionable talk of the town restaurants
But I will
Majestically and proudly take you out to feed
On the state of the ghetto ‘mamas café’ for our meals

After that we will have our little muse to cheer us
A little bit of drunkards humorously swearing by the road side
A little free boxing matches at our local sachet alcohol shops
Hope the sight of blood doesn’t chill you nerves
For here blood is what paints our ghetto rainbow

Don’t bother to take your gadgets here
Whoever snatches them from you is your own business
Police don’t run this town, nor do they bother come
NOR CAN THEY COME! For their dear lives!
Now you know how my ghetto is, lawless!

Wait, I meant to say if you want news updates
Don’t bother to bring your gadgets
Just go to the cardboard barbershops and roadside hair salons
There you will get the Ghetto Daily

We don’t have enough for a copy of the civilized world’s paper,
Forget about the lame and ignorant state broadcasters
Cardboard barbershops are real news channels from the ghetto
‘So and so were caught doing so so so! ’
“Yeah that man had gonorrhea”
His wife is cheating with so so and so!
That’s news to us in the ghetto, politics and religion don’t appeal to us

I’ll take you to the slums
Where lovers entangle in a network of a spider’s web
No man is for one woman there
Nor one woman is for a single man
We’ll walk the devil’s streets in the night
Where good women become bad in the shadow of the night
Where married fathers grapple down on tender lovers

If you see poor people fairing terribly with getting by
Don’t pity them, I repeat don’t pity them and that’s a warning
If you want to pity them let it be at your own peril
Pity helps no one in this part of the world but hurt the pitter.
Help on the other hand does!

People get murdered every night in the ghetto
Don’t gap your mouth in wonder
Your town papers and magazines can’t write them all
They have enough space for politics and none for ghetto rubbish
Life is so in the ghetto and so is death
When you see mutilated privates in bags
Just be glad if and only if they’re not yours

So when I take you to the ghetto buddy
Make sure you are ready to survive in life or death territory
This is not uptown Hollywood life you imitate in the movies
Ghetto is struggle
Ghetto is hard knock life
But above all ghetto is love to those who dwell in it.
So now dear, do you still want to come home with me?