I saw the best minds of my generation

drop out of school

and get their education on the streets,

in the schools of hard knocks:

in group homes, reform schools, jails,

reformatories, insane asylums, and prisons.

They dropped out of schools

that didn’t teach

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed;

schools that didn’t understand

the psyche of

The Wretched of the Earth;

schools that didn’t challenge;

schools that placed a premium

on memorization and rote

at the expense of

thoughtfulness and learning;

schools incapable

of tapping into

the creative energy of minds

that were once trained

in the greatest institutions of learning

on Mother Earth,

in Songhai, Ghana, Mali, and Timbuktu;

schools that taught

history that excluded them

and their contributions;

schools that alienated them;

schools that taught cruelty;

schools with low ceilings

and finite possibilities.

I saw the brightest boys of my generation

descend into insanity.

They were in the best high schools

the City had to offer,

but their minds

were light-years ahead of the curriculum.

We knew they were different,

their heads shaped like eggs,

but brilliant,

not of the world they were relegated.

They tutored others

in math and science,

and instead of graffiti

wrote formulas on the walls.

They were bored in lab

so conducted their own experiments,

on stray cats and dogs –

we saw their remains throughout the projects.

They flew homing pigeons

from coops on the projects’ rooftops,

sent esoteric messages

to other egg heads

throughout the City’s housing developments.

They experimented

with mind-altering drugs –

Acid, LSD, and angel dust.

They were our dark angels,

not of the world they were relegated.

They leapt off of tall buildings,

believing they could fly

like their pigeons,

and they did,

for a brief moment in time,

only to crash land in the concrete jungle,

their wings crushed

and their bodies broken.

I saw the best physical specimens of my generation,

the fastest, the strongest,

play three sports with effortless grace,

not become all American.

I saw them earn full scholarships

to play basketball

but drop out of school

in their freshmen year

because they refused to ride the bench

behind any of the starting five

whom they ran faster than

and jumped higher than

and shot hoops

with the accuracy of marksmen.

So, they returned to the streets,

their dreams of playing

pro basketball

dashed on the hardwood floors of colleges

eager to exploit their talent;

instead, they played in the summer leagues,

more dazzling than Earl “the Pearl” Monroe.

And when the sun sets,

not only did the freaks come out –

            The freaks come out at night,

            The freaks come out at night

— but the gamblers

collecting their winnings

from the games,

the pimps, hustlers, conmen, and gang members,

the whole wide underworld.

Then their physical prowess

was put to other tests.

I saw them outrun cop cars

and motorcycles

and police dogs.

I saw them hurdle

five-foot fences

in a single bound,

leap from building to building,

with cops in hot pursuit,

and they seemed to always get away.

Before extreme sports were invented,

they were pushing their bodies

to the outer limits,

redefining the use of space.

I saw them subway surfing

and elevator surfing,

engaged in thrills that could kill.

I saw the boldest boys of my generation,

those that didn’t die young,

graduate from petty to major crimes.

It started innocently enough,

playing hooky from school,

stealing lunch from the bodega,

but gradually escalated

to shoplifting,

burglary, armed robbery,

and even murder.

From juvenile delinquents

to juvenile offenders

to youthful offenders

to adult criminals.

In the projects

they hunted the rats for sport,

with BB guns

and bow and arrows;

and it turned out

that some of the animals’ remains

I saw throughout the projects

was not the result

of the brilliant egg heads’ experiments,

but evidence of their torture.

They were not only the boldest,

but also, the most alienated

of my generation.

They hated a world that hated them –

“The Hate that Hate Produced.”

They hated this world

of low ceilings

and finite possibilities.

They hated this world

that would deny them

their dreams.

Thus, they ended up

in group homes, reform schools, jails,

reformatories, insane asylums, and prisons.

A lawyer would later tell me

that all of this was “inevitable,”

which made me think

of the Watchers,

the Watchers from behind Venetian blinds,

the projects’ old ones in the know,

septuagenarian seers,

who predicted

that many of my generation

wouldn’t amount to anything,

that we’d end up

in group homes, reform schools, jails,

reformatories, insane asylums, and prisons,

that many of us

would not live long,

that many of us,

certainly,

would not live to see fifty years.

I saw the bravest boys of my generation

find their way out of the projects

and into Basic Training.

They knew

there was no way they could be

all they wanted to be

in projects

with low ceilings

and finite possibilities.

They went

from leaping from building to building,

from subway surfing

and elevator surfing,

to jumping out of airplanes

to fight in Granada and Panama.

They were honor guards in championship games,

those games

the best physical specimens of our generation

should’ve been playing in.

They were in the Marines,

in the Army, and Navy.

They swaggered down the streets of Spain,

ran with the bulls,

found cheap thrills in Manila

with “our little brown cousins,”

redefined what it meant

to be a Samurai in Japan,

fished in Korea,

drank beer in Germany

with the frauleins

and convinced them

that Hitler got it wrong,

that these physical specimens

were the Master Race –

you could

take them out of the ghetto –

none of them came back to the projects.

Later, I saw them,

military erect,

at the funerals

of their parents,

and their younger and older siblings,

and so many others

we grew up with

who died

in the summer of their lives

– casualties of

the wars on poverty and crime.

We looked at each other,

nodding,

acknowledging that

we are still here,

Black boys

transmuted into Black men

despite the strange alchemy

of white America,

the low ceilings

and finite possibilities

that would have been our lot

if we weren’t

the brightest,

the boldest,

the bravest

of our generation,

building on the Black philosophy,

of making a way out of no way.

In those moments, we looked at each other,

shared that nod of Black Brotherhood,

acknowledging that we were still here,

unbroken –

celebrating life.