As I walk to the bus stop,
Wait a minute, “walk” to the bus stop??
Oh, yes, I’m back around the old neighborhood;
‘Sold my old car to get here and create money momentum!
So as not to go “under”;
I feel I am a failure.

So…As I walk to the bus stop, each house on every block
Has a story or evokes a stored memory;
Which I can’t quite remember as I pass,
Nor will I when I return.
Spookily haunting is the past like that,
In a way I am amused by.

A girl I liked in that one,
Some tough bully kid in the next;
A friendly, now older gent still working his garage I see.
A crazy memory here,
Whip Appeal crush there.
It all a blur now.

Then I pass the park where I played
So much punch and stick-ball.
Where I diligently trained to become the next Oscar Robertson!
The former Haggerty, then “Jamaica” Park
Who knows what they’ve named it nowadays;
I did not notice a NYC Parks Department sign.
Only that they reconfigured all of the hoops courts where the softball outfield
Used to be, OMG! Weird!
Now Mexican-looking guys play cards where the Home Plate was,
When I pitched an underhand softball No-hitter,
While the girls-to-impress of the day,
Eye us from the now-gone metal-chained swings area.

Now I’ve caught the Q110.
Riding, bumping, rolling down the Avenue;
Old movie theatre marquee where I saw “Bonnie and Clyde” first-run is gone!
It is now another church?
That old sandstone brick bank building is now a DENTAL Center??
Where is Eddie’s original old “African-American” barber shop?
Is this “progress”?
I notice their absence and ask myself,
“What happened to the Caucasian Europeans and Black Americans?”
I maybe know the common answer to that but,
We were supposed to have integrated our great city and society.
This looks/sounds like I “returned” to a Third World country!

Now thicker into the ole “Valencia” shopping district,
I think the islanders took “Jamaica Avenue” too literally!
I know that this is historically the number-ONE immigrant town,
Now though, it is troubling to see here it is mostly brown!
Why, against my vision of the cross-pollination,
I said to Mum who was smiling as I walked up to the front porch;
Do humans behave contrary to the way
Our Creator and Heavenly Father planned,
Can’t we be more like the bee
Which takes pollen from flowers of any color,
Producing honey for all indiscriminately?

Did we again in this area and probably many others,
Choose American-style re-segregation?
It seems that the whole Caribbean and middle east,
Relocated to New York City over the past 20 years!
And they aren’t following the “rules” we used have to.
Driving on the road like “koo-koo”!

Unfortunately, it seems to me that the stable European descendants have lost New York City (with the exception of Staten Island – which is another whole story for a different post) to the Haitian and Caribbean coconuts and their violent youth gangs.

The only music around the way that is the same,
Is that of the Mister Softee ice cream truck.

“Stop Requested”…