get out while you can

we were good boys

and bad boys

in the old

neighborhood.

growing up side by side

in brick duplexes

along the border

of D.C. and Maryland,

just across from

Southern Avenue,

now Martin Luther King.

we were mostly

poor white kids

from divorced homes.

our fathers were in the Navy,

our mothers

waitresses.

some of us went to jail, some

to law

school or became

soldiers in the Vietnam war.

some became

policemen

or doctors, vagrants,

rebels without a cause.

while others struggled with

drink and drugs.

addictions and bad decisions,

never getting free.

stuck with nowhere to go.

you had to get out

the first chance you had

before that happened.