‘Gentrification (Communal Genocide/The Message)’ - written/painted by me 5 ft x 4 ft, Acrylic, Oil, Ink on canvas: Everyone, From Children to spouses, Homes and houses Uprooted more than uplifted. Ctrl’d, Alt, delete, Then of course, evidently Shft’d. I see the ghosts of what use to be, And High rises with high prices Are surely of no use to me, They weren’t for us truthfully, So Ruthlessly I walk through the street, The one called ‘memory lane’, Its strange how it doesn’t feel quite the same And everyone’s unfamiliar, No kinfolk, More white blokes, Can’t quite cope, And new builds built perpendicular Also known as; The gentrified signature. I can no longer walk in denial. The truth, Much like the sun, Can only remain hidden for a while. A better future promised Through poetic purgery, Residents left With a broken heart That’s Damaged beyond ‘Heart repair surgery’... No more mr jones grocery store, Because wholefoods Is whole felt A whole lot more. Elephants with no castles? Adjusting to new surroundings That I recognised in the days Of being just a rascal. No more community park, No where to walk, smoke and think after dark... We were just some flowers growing in the garden of ‘endz’, It wasn’t always fruitful but it was fun to pretend. Till They hoisted us by our stems And severed our roots, even had the audacity to clip us by our shoots And now I wonder... If I should save up for stocks? It seems like a rational remedy, So Buying back the blocks Can become my new Retail therapy... But till then They’ll use force by any means, So we kiss goodbye to the home of our Childhood dreams, A disease it seems, One that spreads like wild fire, Inescapable, With no chance of a vacation, I’ll never forget that man-made my worst nightmare, The one called; ‘gentrification’.