Oakland is gearing up for its 10th annual The 10th All Oakland Youth Talent Showcase:”Oakland State of Mind”
May 14, 2010
Scottish Rite Center, Oakland
Ella Baker Center’s Heal the Streets fellows are co-hosts of the event and few of them will be taking the stage to showcase their talents. Alona, one of the 2009-10 fellows recently won an Oakland Poetry Contest with her poem, the Man Behind Bars. Check out her writing and then attend tomorrow night’s Talent Showcase to see even more of the creativity and talent that Oakland youth have to offer.
The Man Bahind Bars
by Alona Everett
There’s a man that is hurting inside
His soul is in a well with spare change
His sorrow is in dept with his troubles and crimes
Society treaty him as an animal and locked him in a cage
They don’t feel his pain and believe its his animosity
The more they dehumanize him of his capability
They’re afraid he’ll get insane
His patience is ticking and his getting very impatience
He wants to be emancipated, by incresing his time
The anxiety of his future is awaiting his temptation
He used to walk the streets like he had no enemies
He was brought up in this world filled with hegemony
To deprive this innocent man brings back his intriguing memories
He’s been entice with the excitement of the negativity
Money, Sex, Drugs and all the above
He grew up in the ghetto where you’re a sucka for love
His passion was modest, but in the streets he was a thug
The he acted bad around the hood, he forgot that he had something good
I guess his hole grew deeper the more he dug
Now incarcerated trapped inside a box with a caged door
The outside world of a better day is what he’s looking for
He wants to be a new man than what he was in the past
To hoping one day he can be empowered to gain the life he nevered had
This is dedicated to that man
The Man Behind Bars
Elona Everett, 17, became a Heal the Streets fellow in the fall of 2009. She will be a senior at Mandela High School next year. Elona lives in East Oakland with her family. Ms. Everett also participates in youth programs with Movimiento and Youth Roots (a project of Oakland Leaf).
