My Name is Ian, alias "Maximum Fubba"

Creating havoc in Jamaica is my "bread and butta"

Powerlessness and anger are the main emotions I "know"

And so I don't take lightly to anyone "stepping on my toe"

I've learnt that success outside the underground economy is a fable

Because there's never enough room around the legitimate opportunity table

The rumour mill calls me a garrison gangster who practices "bad-bwoyness"

But from my point of view I shall never again be poor and powerless

I have an "explosive temper" and this year I've killed two people to date

As I am an annual contributor to Jamaica's murder and wounding rate

I'm now thirty-eight with three baby-mothers and six children

Paula two, Karen and Sophie five, Marlon, Greg and Errol each ten

I live with my mother named Precious and I take life "in stride"

And my main form of recreation is extra female loving on the side

I know women like Errol's mother Ruby would not have cooperated

Had I not gotten my "sincere-lying act" together and had it automated

Ruby beats herself over the head and says that I take her for a fool

But I learnt part of my sweet-talker game in my mother's complaining school

Every criticism and put down from my mother about my father was a clue

To what goes into the man-bashing and correlating female-expectation stew

I listen to women maintain their resilience by cussing and "dropping wod"

And like fertiliser to soil these women are somehow still able to thrive and bud

But this female short cut to emotional stability drew a little boy's blood

And filled his veins with emotional manure and his stomach with angry mud

From her I learnt that women are free to say whatever whenever they want

And weed out positive images of manhood and uproot a boy's self-esteem plant

And with all this women are still seen as Jamaica's main hope and salt

Because everything wrong with women and Jamaica is a Jamaican man's fault

But my first picture of manhood came from my mother's venting and railing

And it was a mental mug shot of my dad with the caption "Constantly Failing"

I was raised in a school culture based on ever-ready corporal-punishment

And at home the key to survival always seemed to have a strong financial-bent

At school I tuned out authority and I could no longer see or hear correction

And now I use my anger to fuel my blinding volume of social aggression

At home I blocked out many details of my mother's songs of grumble

And so I'm not fully aware of the emotional rocks over which I stumble

Life has taught me that no betterment comes from doing the right financial thing

Because mom worked hard and saved but was always nursing an economic sting

I was not always this way and I sometimes get this vague recurring "flash back"

That reminds me of how and why I decided to try the get-rich quick-track

Home Scene

Patience at home was as rare as cold hard cash

And when frustration flared up all of us siblings were made to feel like trash

Every little mistake me or my sisters made mom blew it up to be a big deal

And she often ended her lament to our imperfection with "who can hear mus feel"

I learnt from her words that in moments of anger life can quickly become very cheap

And I have heard versions of this refrain ever since I learnt to creep:

"But is wey wrong wid dis pickney, dis bwoy of mine?

Ian, if a eva lick you yu might end up wey star doin shine

Dis bwoy won't stop getting on mi nerves to ratid

Ian, is wa wrong wid yu, yu caan kip quiet, yu haunted?"

I was raised in an inner-city neighbourhood called Violence-Immersion

Where hunger-related headaches and "white squalls" are always onexcursion

In my neighbourhood knowledge of how to cultivate emotional well-being is rare

And "hard work" and "putting food on the table" is how parents show they care

The Jamaican economy was a street-roaming bully that caused my mother to fret

And having seven little mouths to feed was one of her main subjects of regret

I would promise to one day give this Jamaican economy and extra-vengeful big lick

And seize from this bully's hand the dreaded poverty grinding stick

That some people call "the consumer price index" or "the poor people's vex"

But my mother measures it in slices - the cost of HTB hard-dough bread index

Mom, my sisters and I always lived on the edge of hunger's door

And I vowed, come what may, that as a man I would never be poor

One week mom and I could afford a full loaf of HTB bread at the corner store

The next week we could only buy half-a-bread with the same money or more

Our lives were full of crisis and chaos in an unstable economic situation

And on the radio I heard them blaming it on something called inflation

The Jamaican Dollar inflicted on my mother so many lashes of pain

Even through her "rainy day" savings account at Trusted Bank on Prudent Lane

My mother didn't have the understanding and foresight to know

That a hard currency account was a buffer to "financial death row"

School Scene

"Ian, I am speaking to you. Why don't you pay attention"

Said my grade six teacher for the second time to me with frustration

Teacher, you asked me a question on what you just explained

But I did not follow you because in my mind it rained

My mind rains sadness and lack because hunger is back

I have a hunger for love and stability - I had a short "anger attack"

I live inside my head because my emotional cup is "strange"

It is filled to the brim and way outside my coping range

My teeth are clenched, my body is tensed, but not with grammar

My heart is beating with frustration like a noisy hammer

You assume again that I must not be listeningwell

But I don't correct you, I just sit quietly and I never yell

You think that I might have a learning disability

I think that life is just a road paved with futility

Teacher, I want you to know that our minds don't meet

think that I am worthless male chaff while you see me as wheat

I am fed on a diet of violence, fear and hostility

Yet you expect of me inner strength and outer civility

My learning light is on but in the dark I grope

For a vine other than absurdity and poverty to help me to cope

Please don't speak to me with such anger and disdain

Because when you do you cause my self-esteem to wane

Please teach me self-love, self-respect and self-control - the grammar of "internal life"

So I can hold hope, patience and perseverance in my hand instead of a knife

To improve my internal environment and stop the flooding in my head

So I can plan for a life other than one splattered with red

Don't give up on me as my learning lamp is lit

For if I seem out of it, it's because I am "in it"

I'm immersed in the internal turmoil of anger, hurt and drama

Because I live a life of recurring and un-dealt with trauma

Speak to my needs, I cannot hear what you have said

There is a growling, my hunger for self-expression has not been fed

Help me to control the voice inside my head

That tears me down inside and fills me with dread

Then and only then will we be on the same learning page

And my smile will be genuine and not filled with suppressed rage

Teacher, I would like to tell you all this but I do not have the words

And so I sit here "looking stubborn" but my stomach churns with curds

I don't understand. Stop yelling at me and hitting me. From now on I do not care

As I'll be skipping school often and, as soon as I can, I'll be "getting out of here"

This is how my cries for help at home and school were misunderstood

And why I unplugged from society and relinquished my conscience for good

The violence problem is not in the inner-city but "between the ears"

That fertile mental battleground where lack of knowledge grows like tares.

The following is an excerpt from the submission made to the Jamaica Justice Review Task Force by attorney-at -law Soulette Gray.