I wrote this poem for my 50th birthday. Next year I will be celebrating a milestone birthday. From here on out, I will post this poem every birthday.

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,