The Fire Squad Poem Summary

I grew up in a place where many kids of my demographic didn’t have much therefore the crime rate was high and the employment rate was low. I’ve always worked hard to get the things I wanted. Most of the things I wanted were expensive so I would save enough money to get what I wanted and I would wake up on Saturday mornings with joy in my heart at that I’m able to get something on my own. When the author starts off the poem there is joy in his morning the same as mine, then it all changes when he runs into a woman he had a previous relationship with in the mall. As they’re catching up he finds out where she stays and how she had a new person of interest. If I was in his shoes, I would’ve gotten angry when I found out where she was staying even
Then the author jokes about the Al Green incident in a satirical way that lightens the conversation. I would’ve done the same thing in the conversation because no one wants to see someone that they have love for in a predicament of hopelessness. Therefore instead of addressing the problem at hand we laugh it off and sweep it under a rug. Like the artist J. Cole states in his Fire Squad verse “every good joke contains true sh*t”. Even though she was joking about it, the thought of overpowering her abuser probably rang in her head plenty of times. Now the poem takes an imagery shift across the street to a boy kicking a dog in the sneakers that the author wants. This piece of the poem brought me to the realization that he still hasn’t copped the sneakers, and he has now transferred his anger towards something other than the fact that he doesn’t have the sneakers and that his ex-friend is getting abused in the same home she lives. Also I can see the stray dog being a symbol of the woman and the author can’t take the thought of anymore abuse, meanwhile his ex-friend just can’t take the abuse –