Held Hostage Poem by Thabani Khumalo

Held hostage in streets of the ghetto,
where Thabani once was a little child,
I lived my life like I had no care
and thus I treated myself as though life had no care.
I'd either hurt or be hurt, kill or be killed -
and, in the end, such I was made to believe:
it was worth dying by the hand of the other.

I was impaired by such a life,
it drove an exciting fear within the core of my soul
and I survived like another child at the heated center of war.

Now that I am older and fear I've pasted into a special fold,
I've learned to treat life with the reverence of God,
but life befalls me like a testing area.
I know that there aren't many people who've been built like I am -
a person molded from within to be able to overcome human flaw.
On this again, I know, I stand alone.