Medallions
By Dejanique (Daisy) Armstrong
A medallion buried six feet in mud and trampled on by giant-like critics
Can only be beautiful if you shine it
Kids like us were never considered top notch in the eyes of America
Born in poverty, raised in the ghetto
Couldn’t drop into class, so we dropped out of school
Some walked down a dark path and some stayed in neutral on the light one
But for all, life only looked up when you were praying to God for a way out.
Like my input brother,
Had no respect and got kicked out of the house,
Went homeless…
Had no address, and therefore had poor attendance in classes
He was a no show, so got no breaks like commercials
Got kicked out of high school
Told me that he’d been kicked so many times that year
He had to look in the mirror and remind himself he wasn’t a soccer ball.
We aren’t the cream of the crop
Labeled quickly by society as the “X generation”
Kids of x-cons, stacked with excuses and explanations
Never meeting expectations but expecting something extra
I say we’re excellent
Because a medallion buried six feet in mud and trampled on by giant-like critics
Can only be beautiful if you shine it
Job Corps was our paper towel
And SIATech was the pledge
My input date, March 12th 2012
It was my sister’s birthday, but little did I know it was my birthday too
Medallions like me have success engraved in our creases
But couldn’t find it until we cleaned them
And we achieved it, the unthinkable…
I bet one out of three of us, were told we would never finish high school
I bet one out of eight of us, had parents that never did it
And I bet every single one of us, had a sliver of doubt in ourselves
We wanted to give up, convinced, that the grass was greener on the other side of the fence
Not knowing that really, the grass is only greener where you water it
I fought myself like a biracial racist schizophrenic about whether or not I’d make it
And knew at the end, that through any weather
There was no way I would not make it to the sunshine
I don’t believe that the center is branded by a sunrise for no reason
With every ray that glows at dawn comes new opportunity
Morning grass is misted by dew to remind us, to just do
It’s a new day…
Every Monday, mud covered rim rusted medallions step onto Job Corps campus
Some can’t clean off the grime of their past life and dig themselves yet another hole
But me? Well, we…
Are golden shining “we made it” Medallions
Never to be placed underground again.