Visions appeared in a heat wave when I walked miles to
prevent my disabled mother from becoming homeless. The South Bronx became
mysteriously beautiful like mirages in deserts or televisions. The houses and buildings took me to other
timelines in the history of The City That Never Sleeps where the boy was I
dreamt wide-awake.
I was on a mission of mercy get the new landlords to renew
the lease that was one document required to upgrade healthcare. “Leave your
furniture behind. I’m giving you free bunk beds,” barked one employee of
Paradise Management. It’s not The Holocaust but I’m got flashbacks of carrying
Anne Frank in my arms when our town looked like parts of Europe after the Nazis
Invasions in World War Two and now The WTC.
Burnside Avenue was one place they tried to get us out
to. Every bang on our door scares my
mom. Now he wants us to move like
ping-pong balls to the other side of the building where he and others had succeeded
at concentrating old time tenants.
They wanted us to sign papers to give up our home but no
lease for a smaller apartment. But I got my hands on one and took it to Housing
Court on The Grand Concourse.
“Sweetheart, don’t
let your mother sign this,” a woman said, shaking her head.
The lease does away
with rent control in the homeless shelter called The South Bronx.
I stopped in front of the world-renowned Bronx Zoo of
animals caged up but humanely treated. I remember tigers and lions and bears oh
my. This isn’t Kansas, Toto. It’s making money from poorly designed program
warehousing homeless families (some that yell with drug problems and domestic
disputes stressing other tenants with problems).
Who is paying the rent of $2,800 for them?
My mother pays $499. It’s no wonder the landlords have
resorted to tactics to get rid of elderly women who has been living there since
the last days of Watergate. I’m not a politician or a terrorist but I feel
surrounded by enemies that don’t care I’m losing my mother everyday to the
funeral home across her bedroom window.
She used to work for a pen and pencil factory. She drew me
my first smile. She taught me how to read and write before sending me off to
first grade where I helped classmates to read.
I saw how words could be rearranged to spell sword. I’m Jedi Journalist.
I execute liars with truth, justice and the comic books. See
landlords run.
Run, landlords, run.
Ain’t Got A Home sung by Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry
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