Knock Knock!

Knock! Knock!
Who's there?
Boo
Boo Who?
Why are you crying? lol

This is a popular game that many of us use to play as children, either with our family members or with our friends. But in this poem by Daniel Beaty, Knock! Knock! meant so much more. A game that he yearned to play with his father as a young boy growing up. A game that he once shared with his father. As he would pretend to sleep in his bed almost every night anticipating the usual Knock! Knock! Until one night that knock never came.

In the year 2007, an estimated 1,559,200 children had a father in prison, and nearly half (46%) were children of black fathers. The young boys knock, knocks were ceased because the fist of the man that once playfully pounced on the doors of his son's room were now chained. Closing an unwritten and unexperienced chapter of this young boys life. Beaty continues on speaking about how his mother once took him to go visit his father, as a young child, confused by his surroundings and bewildered towards the situation. Beaty states,

"We reach a room of windows and brown faces,
Behind one of the windows, sits my father,
I jump out of my momma's arms and run joyously towards my papa,
Only to be confronted by this window.
I knock knock trying to break through the glass, trying to get to my father.
I knock knock as my mama pulls me away before my papa can even say a word.
And for years he has never said a word.
And so twenty-five years later I write these words,
For the little boy in me who still awaits his papa's knock."

Steel bars seem to reflect more images of fathers than a young childs eyes. Deprived of that father figure to teach the child all the things that a father should have been there to guide their child through. As Beaty cries out,

"Papa, come home 'cause I miss you,
I miss you waking me up in the morning and telling me you love me,
Papa, come home, 'cause there's thing I dont know,
And I thought maybe you could teach me:
How to shave,
How to dribble a ball,
How to walk to a Lady,
How to walk like a man.
Papa, come home, 'cause I decided a while back that I want to be just like you,
But I'm forgetting who you are."

As years of hurt and pain pours out of the mouth of the young boy enprisoned within the body of a grown man still wounded. As he was forced to father himself and created expressions that he wished were spoken from the lips a the man that use to knock. His father would have told him,

"Dear Son,
I'm sorry I never came home.
For every lesson I failed to teach, hear these words:
Shave in one direction with strong deliberate strokes to avoid irritation.
Dribble the page with the brilliance of your ballpoint pen
Walk like a God and your Goddess will come to you
No longer will I be there to knock on your door
So you must learn to knock for yourself
Knock knock down doors of racism and poverty that I could not
Knock knock down doors of oppurtunity,
For the lost brilliance of the black men that crowd these cells
Knock knock with diligence for the sake of your children
Knock knock for me for as long as you are free,
These prison gates cannot contain my spirit.
The best of me still lives within you
Knock knock with knowledge that you are my son, but you are not my choices.

Of the Nation's 72.3 million minor children in 1999, 2.1% had a parent in State or Federal prison. Although the footsteps of the people that we once should have followed dissappeared, we learn to create and follow our own footsteps in which only our shoes can fit. As Beaty said, we are our father's son's and daughter's, but we are not their choices. We are the foundation of future greatness.

Knock! Knock!
Who's there?
We Are! (the future).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhT_e6D3DeA