I was raised in rock city: Detroit.

Not  'in close proximity', but Detroit.

I was raised in the city that improved the assembly line.

But nowadays it seems that all Detroit has assembled is grotesque debt and an unseemly number of bounced checks. 

Forgive me if it sounds like my priveledge is unchecked, but what part of crippling debt sets a precedent for 'improved' to you?

 

I was grown, but not watered down or buried in Detroit.

I recall Kwame as a poster on every neighbor's yard. I did not know it then, but now, I know how people like him have turned the city of Detroit, into the city of exploit.

1st term, 2nd term, please get me away from this germ, that has infected and depleted the city for which, my fondness is deep-seated.

1. The fraud  2. the city funds and for Killpatrick, 3. marks his hat-trick, 3. was Belle isle that will forever now be a file full of pictures in a drawer.

The fact that my family and I were not permanently planted to the malnourished, neglected, roots of the city, is probably the only reason we did make it out.
 

I'm sick of hearing of Detroit's emergency manager.

What makes you think I'll be glad to know that the place I once played, day by day, when I was just a young child as moldable as clay; what makes you think I'll be glad to know how much it's turned to shit now?

When I turn on the radio, it's nothing but Detroit's poverty-frequency tuning in. I want the radio talk shows to talk so Detroit does not seem like a constantly-pity worthy-county. When I'm tuning in, I don't want  'putrecence' and 'homelessness' to be Detroit's meaning.

And what makes you think I wanted to hear, when I turned on the radio that morning, that the bilingual elementary I so used to love, the one that housed the teachers that I held in a cloud up above, had run itself dry. The cloud is just dust in the atmosphere now, and in hopes of savior, I shed a tear, but how?

How could a tear save a school when it stood on a desert of a city, and how could my pity have brought the emergency committee the remedy to the tragic loss of a childhood: a drought.

know that I don't criticize the thought and care with which city efforts are made to try and make repairs.

I just wish I could easier bear the fact that these fixes have to be made in the first place.

I'm not pointing fingers, but I'm putting up a fist, because unfortunately, the tiresome list of things to fix in this city grows exponentially.

 

And all this, just food for thought from a person raised in a city who's corner store, on the block up, was too often shot up.

What of the permanently planted, like the workers at the plants who come home to wives and infants?  My parents had the sense and the means to get out.
 

But what of those lost in  bramble, the ones who can't flee and scramble to outrun this flammable patch of weeds? What was once a great garden, now has it's inhabitants guarding what little they have left to hold on to. 

I was grown, but not watered down, or buried in Detroit. But what of those caught under the rubble, as this city turns to Troy?

I was raised in rock city, motor city, assembly city, Detroit.

And the way things are looking now, I'm damn glad I made it out.