SOUL CRY

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Andre Moore. SOUL CRY

SOUL CRY. Missing Fathers. Andre Moore

Dedication

Acknowledgments

I’m Alone In Darkness

Can’t you see you’re hurting me?

Lust or Love

Baby on the way

Runaway

Kind Strangers

Locked Up

Teenage Fatherhood

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Special dedications to my grandfather, Uriah Brown, I owe the possiblities of all my moments to you. My little girls Aayanna and Aaliyah all I do I do it for you guys. there is no greater love than whats in my heart for my girls.To the man that never gave up on me and was always there to remind me “it’s never too late, to do the right thing.” I am forever in debt to the kindness of your liberal soul. Thank you for being my friend, mentor, teacher, but most of all my father. Harold (dad) “Thank you for keeping me alive all these years. I Love you old guy”—Doodle

Missing Fathers

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As kids in Jamaica, we learned to live off the land, survive and make do with what we had. From chasing chickens until they got tired, to climbing trees higher than 8-20 story buildings just for food so we could quiet the stomach from grumbling. In those days, most people did not have jobs; they gathered and grew what they could which was then sold at market. Therefore, the growing of marijuana or “herb or weed” as it is known in Jamaica was a profitable market. Every Saturday morning after watching cartoons, on the six channels and the only color TV on the property I might add, Anthony and I would make our way down to his father’s house where my other two cousins Eatan and Derval would meet us. We would then go to Uncle Lasie’s house where we would bend down and pick the buds off the herb plant for many hours. Our fingers would become tar black from picking at the THC all day, for free I might add, boy, if I only knew. On some Saturdays, we would climb the mountain up the road to meet Tommy at his ganja field, where we would bring back down, in crocus bags, the herb that was harvested. Damn I did a lot for free. When dinner time would come around I was always well fed because I would always eat at Mervin’s, Dervals’, Lasie’s, and at my grandmother’s house. Anthony was always with me, he was like my older brother, but he didn’t eat much, he was always fussy with his food and I would end up eating his too.

Come Monday mornings it was time for school. All the older kids went to Sheffield school by themselves, but I was too young so grandpa took me to and from school on his bicycle until the day I decided I was too old and I wanted to go with my cousins. We would all walk together until we come to the intersection; my school was on the left and my cousins went to the right. After I cried and acted up, Grandpa said he would never take me to school again. Surely enough, he never did take me again and we never spoke about it again. My older cousins would have to walk me to school until I graduated pre-school and started first grade now. Once I got to first grade, my school was a lot closer to my cousins. It was not long after I got to the same school as my cousins, when I realized that maybe I did not want to be here.

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