Why I Can't Help But Love Baltimore

In Baltimore, I feel the lingering sensations of something old, something known, and unknown.

Sometimes, a burdened awareness rises and signals to my pores, a tingling, a recognition of the unsettled trespassing of souls, skittering, like a shredder over skin, skimming, and then crumbling, layer upon layer, sifting and evaporating, mourning memories lightening bright.

Naysayers bemoan our Baltimore a Godless city, submitting to a perverse commentary of last rites. Reminiscing and relishing an overture of prayers, football games, and a sprinkle of politics seasoned with trash and rodents and potholes, then garnished the diminishment of vices with spices of laziness, alcohol, guns, and greed. All for soundbites and likes.

The early morning pale subdues the leafy overgrown trees on Howard Park Avenue. Giant slumbering branches covered shamelessly by the climbing parasitic greens, clinging to solidify, new upon old, becoming something more. Cobwebs billow, hanging from leaves, grasping like white pinafores, fledgling baptismal gowns, negligent to a task. A daily purification ceremony murmurs the wind, to sanctify this city, as it marches to stand at a finish line, to claim a golden halo of - respectability.

This amazing city, Baltimore, a place deeply entrenched to sate souls and nostrils. Filling us with more than a simple fare of fried fish, steamed crabs, and french fries, all covered with Old Bay and that sweet spicy red sauce. We are more than our friendships and food. We are fathers, mothers, sisters, uncles, aunties, and grandparents. We. Are. More.

We see beauty around us every day. An assortment of brownstones, red stones, and white stone buildings, rising, sustaining, or abandoned, holding fort to shelter - renter, owner, drifter, doorways as colorful as our flags and artificial flowers, proudly and profusely displayed under wooden arches and concrete porches; azaleas and hyacinths thrust into patches of dirt, thriving and clinging to assert an American dream.

Hard working humans, providing for families, living, eating, and savoring community identity within their struggles. Walking to Pratt or Cold Spring, or busing to Randallstown, or driving around and up I-695 to Towson. The familiarity they know welcoming, yet bruising, knowing their city is a beacon for trolls, violence, or farcical benevolence, or human actors displaying a violent cultural bravado; interlopers, claiming notoriety and deafening reasonable rhetoric.

Are we anesthetized to a purpose? Are we Baltimoreans paralyzed to the momentary struggle?

Rats and roaches abound, yes! Godly creatures not easily deposed, yet, purport to describe a people, a history, a circumstance?

We are not our struggle, beautiful people. We are not the splashes of brackish and stagnant cesspools, as posted. We are not our busted concrete columns or cracked and crooked veneers. We claim our humanity in the name of our Old Ones, railroaded North to escape and live. Their cracked heels and bowed shoulders fought to claim this struggle. They would eulogize our rats and roaches to scuttle and rise without the bonds of fear, and feet, and mouth.

I love you Baltimore! Live to cast your glow. Let us be released from tears and chains and claim our rightful place off of the backs of our Old Ones. We are always on the precipice of something, waiting, waiting, waiting, as our children cry in their classrooms baking in the daylight sun, then the treacherous moonlight hides the white outlines of their broken bodies. And again, and again, our shame is silenced, defeated, to the rhythms of living, and guilt.

Speak up to reclaim our voices Baltimore! Sing and dance on our streets. Shout and let our tears flow for peace, for healing, and for a revolution to save souls. I love you Baltimore! Our Old Ones are waiting...