Ghosts of Ghetto Trails

Once a blessing, the local pizza shop and corner store are becoming the root of a new neighborhood curse.

It's getting warm and the local slugs are out, slithering up & down the street with their pants hanging low.  They have no good concept of home or community - the world is their trash can and the people in it are merely pawns in their game of, "Can I get a ride?"

I walk beyond my front gate to find empty beverage cans and chip bags strewn from point A to point B.  I'm the unlucky one - situated at just the spot where the snacks & drinks run out....thoughtlessly dropped where the slugs never break stride.

I lived this ghetto dream before.

The drinks and chip servings were smaller, and so were the kids who tossed their empty containers on my front walk.   The store was tiny, the streets more narrow, and the passers-by couldn't ignore my calls to "Pick it up!"  No good excuse in a place where there were city trash cans on every corner.

Here, the streets are wider, the careless trash dispensers taller with bigger attitudes. And even if I caught them in the act, they'd feign ignorance and use their selective hearing to dismiss my calls with the wind.

I did not move here to repeat the past in a place that simply provides a bigger canvas for the litter paintings of ghetto mentality.

Let the battle begin!