gEntrification (communal genocide) (2022)

5 ft x 4 ft

oil, arcylic, ink on canvas

Gentrifcation (communal Gencocide) (2022)

written by Shaquille-Aaron Keith

Everyone,
From Children to spouses,
Homes and houses
Uprooted more than uplifted.
Ctrl’d, Alt, delete,
Then of course,
evidently Shft’d.

I see the ghosts of what use to be,
And
High rises with high prices
Are surely of no use to me,
They weren’t for us truthfully,

So Ruthlessly I walk through the street,
The one called ‘memory lane’,
Its strange how
it doesn’t feel quite the same
And everyone’s unfamiliar,
No kinfolk,
More white blokes,
Can’t quite cope,
And new builds built perpendicular
Also known as;
The gentrified signature.

I can no longer walk in denial.
The truth,
Much like the sun,
Can only remain hidden for a while.

A better future promised
Through poetic purgery,
Residents left
With a broken heart
That’s Damaged beyond
‘Heart repair surgery’…

No more mr jones grocery store,
Because wholefoods
Is whole felt
A whole lot more.
Elephants with no castles?
Adjusting to new surroundings
That I recognised in the days
Of being just a rascal.
No more community park,
No where to walk,
smoke
and think after dark…

We were just some flowers
growing in the garden of ‘endz’,
It wasn’t always fruitful
but it was fun to pretend.
Till They hoisted us by our stems
And severed our roots,
even had the audacity
to clip us by our shoots
And now I wonder…

If I should save up for stocks?
It seems like a rational remedy,
So Buying back the blocks
Can become my new
Retail therapy…

But till then
They’ll use force by any means,
So we kiss goodbye
to the home of our
Childhood dreams,

A disease it seems,
One that spreads like wild fire,
Inescapable,
With no chance of a vacation,
I’ll never forget that man-made my worst nightmare,
The one called; ‘gentrification’.