365westoakstreetincabrinigreen365daysayear

365westoakstreetincabrinigreen365daysayear

Damn, Candy Man He Ain't All That I Lived Beneath The Candy Lady For Years!
- Doreen in Cabrini 💚
Feeling Ghetto & You Don't Know Where To Turn?
An Inner City Tale (Ode To Cabrini Green)
Cabrini
Say Their Names, Say Their Names
They Said That It Wouldn't Last But Rap Music Has Had A Very Long Past...
They Wear The Crown
Thank Heaven For Little Girls
Me & Mrs. Jones
Fly Like An Eagle
Lane Of Memory
If Everything Is Going Your Way...Blow A Kiss You Are In Heaven
Never Give Up
Just Words
They Threw Lemons at Us So The Candy Lady Made Lemonade!
A poem dedicated To The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
A Poem Is...
Moving Day
Cell Block H In Cabrini
Everything But The Kitchen Sink
Mothers Of Cabrini
Girl X
You Might Be More Ghetto Than A 5th Grader If...
WJPC & WBMX In Cabrini Green
One Day You're Going To Look Down & See My Name
Surrogate Mother America
Do They Ever Stop?
I Love You More Than A Bald Headed Step Child With A Lisp, But You Raggedy Jackal You, I have learne
Good Times!
Misty Water Colored Memories
Candy Man
Don't Stoop!
Mama Said...
Ghetto Teachers
Those Who Care
When Man Closes A Door God Opens Up A Window
The 18th Letter
Cab# Fam #2024
Spoken Word Is Poetry's Feisty Cousin
Summer of 78.
Camp Chief Makisabee
I Ain't Gonna Rhyme for Leroy Weatherall & Joe Robinson
Michael Jackson in Cabrini Green
Cooley High In Reverse
Halloween In Cabrini Green
Christmas In Cabrini Green
Steppin' In Seward Park...2024
Lips (The Mouthpiece To The World)
My Favorite Episode of Good Times...What's Yours?
Represent for Your Candy Lady!
Ghetto Blasters
Love You More Than Words Can Ever Say...
Please Use Your Head for More Than A Hat Rack, Thank You..Signed Your Teachers and Your Mother!
Jane Byrne In Cabrini Green
Cooley High
Near North Career Magnet High School Alumni Please Check in!
Bruce Conn In Cabrini Green
Marion Stamps
Richard E. Byrd School
- Feeling Ghetto & You Don't Know Where To Turn?
Top Ten Hood Movies
Woody Wood Pencil
All In Together Any Kind Of Weather I See The Teacher Looking Out The Window...Ding Dong Fire Bells!
Nick Names In Cabrini Green
I WANNA GET AWAY FROM YOU
Cousin Buzzy in Cabrini Green
It Takes All Kind To Make A World....in Cabrini
Elevators
Montgomery Wards Tutoring Service
Steve & Marlene Pedigo
Ollie Ollie Oxen Fee
What PJ Paparelli Knew And Why He Mattered
A Tribute To Frankie Beverly & Maze
Life After Cooley High & Good Times
Ghetto Supa Stars!
Top 25 Favorite Rap Songs
Feeling Ghetto & You Don't Know Where To Turn?
Help Make Me Rich! Buy my Dang Book!
Stoney Jackson in Cabrini Green
Motown In Cabrini Green
Madea in Cabrini Green
McVickers & United Artist in Downtown Chicago
Peaceful Journey (I Will Always Remember You) A poem for PJ
House Party's or Sets In Cabrini Green
You Can't Have Everythang When You Wake Up in Cabrini Green
Luther
Crows Only Pick At The Best Fruit
Kenyatta's Revenge In Cabrini Green
Mama Black Widow In Cabrini Green
Whore Son in Cabrini Green
Lordthankgodforbeatstreetbreakinandkrushgroovehousepartycuztheywasabiuttoferrisbuellerand realfastcl
Rest Well Tony Todd
- Feeling Ghetto & You Don't Know Where To Turn?
A Rapper With A Slower Cadence
Gotta Laugh To Keep From Crying
16 Shots!
Coming Of Age In Mississippi In Cabrini Green
ON TV & Spectrum In Cabrini
Thank You Lord
Who Was The Best DJ in Da Greens
Met This Girl Walking In The Ghetto Looking Good But Looking Down
Celebrities That Visited Cabrini Green
Life Beyond The Clouds (For Nailah Franklin)
Somethin' In The Milk Ain't White
Cobbs!
If...
Back Down Cabrini Green Lane
Roots
Carol Burnett in Cabrini Green
Project Heat
The Atlanta Murders in Cabrini Green
Richard Pryor In Cabrini Green
Millie Jackson in Cabrini Green
Power Couples in Cabrini Green
Sea Monkeys in Cabrini Green
A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste In Cabrini Green
Sammy's In Cabrini 💚
Homage To Helen in Cabrini 💚
One Day I'm Going To Leave This Place
The Day That Ronald Reagan Got Shot I Missed My TV Debut!
Standing 10 toes Down in Cabrini 💚 Green
This poem is sticking like a hot bowl of grits!
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman In Cabrini Green
The Village In Cabrini
Can't Make Moves Without The Fam...
Soul Train In Cabrini 💚 Green
Another One Bites Da Dust...in Cabrini Green
Going To See The Wiz...In Cabrini Green
The Elephant In Da Room
Tales From The Hoodie (For Trayvon Martin)
Sumthin' In The Milk Ain't White...In Cabrini 💚 Green
Preaching To The Choir...
Sugar Ray Dinky ...In Cabrini 💚🍏
No Kids Die In The Chi In Cabrini....
Dantrell Davis In Cabrini ...
Mama
Maya Angelou All Up In Through Cabrini 🍏 Green
Heavy D!
Will My Words Live On....
Charge It To My Head & Not My Heart
Penny Wise Pound Foolish
Loneliness In Cabrini 💚 Green
Slice Of Life in Cabrini 💚 Green
Tribute To Bernie Mac
From Plantation To Ghetto
A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste
You Give A Kid A Book You Give A Kid A Break
Singing & Swingin' & Getting Merry Like Christmas...
Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto...
Tell Them When God Made One He Didn't Stop Making Them In Cabrini 💚 Green
Hip Hoppers & Baby Boomers Rapping A Taste
Contact
Hey Mrs. Robinson!
Veterans in Cabrini 💚 Green
- You Make Me Feel Mighty Real In Cabrini Green
Lower North Center
Seward Park
Montgomery Ward Tutoring Services
Why I Wrote Damn, Candy Man...
Going To Church In Cabrini Green
My Black History Poem In Cabrini Green
Role Models In Cabrini
People who lived in the old buildings Near Cabrini 🍏 Green
Rubik's Gameroom
Encyclopedia Brown in Cabrini Green
Tussy in Cabrini 💚 Green
Ambi in Cabrini 🍏 Green
Right On Magazine in Cabrini 🍏.Green
The Chicago Reporter
You Can't Win A Race
School Days
Happy Birthday In Cabrini 💚 Green
CHA Senior Xmas Party 2024.
Mayor Harold Washington
Jerome In Cabrini 💚 Green
You Light Up My Life...NOT
No Harlem Renaissance
Standing In The Shadows of Love in Cabrini Green
Poetry In Cabrini 🍏 Green
Listening To Herb Kent The Cool Gent on The Weekends in Cabrini 🍏 Green
Bubble Gum Bubble Gum In The Dish....
Christmas Didn't Start Without Donny Hathaway This Christmas Being Played Simultaneously Throughout
Farmer Browns in Cabrini 💚 Green

Me...Doreen Ambrose circa 1975.

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No Harlem Renaissance For Cabrini Green

Just so you know I will not be coming to you from the Harlem Renaissance

These days it'll be via Youtube and hopefully I'll have you totally ensconced...

In my words, stories and Cabrini Green soliloquy

Man, in this era it feels good to see

So many people creating podcasts and movies who are from without

Trying to recreate and tell what life in The Greens

back in the day was all about.

If it wasn't for certain social media platforms

algorithm's some of these people wouldn't possess

any rhythm or a clue about where I was born!

All they have is their curiosity with them

and their sense of loathing

Which they disguise as something foreboding

Like Candy Man or some other unbelievable coding

But let me not continue to go there so I digress

It is not my intention to rain on other people's happiness.

But just like these ambulance chaser honed in on a child's epitaph

Then began building paragraph after paragraph

Why can't they chime in one that took a more

positive path

So there you have it the evolution will be televised

But it won't be watered down or even supersized!

Like a 5 dollar value meal

To just to appeal to other folk with Cha Ching Cha Ching in their

eyes!

But where were all these Monday morning quarterbacks

With their bright ideas, diagrams, statistics and facts?

Where were these scholars and historians when it was the very

hard way that we had to learn

That when the going got rough we had to deal with ole fake and self -serving Mayor Jane Byrne.

But again, just so you know, I won't be coming to you by way of the Harlem Renaissance,

These days it'll be via Youtube but hopefully I will have you thoroughly ensconced.

Doreen Vanlee had something to get off her chest. She’s miffed about “Candyman,” the 1992 horror film that depicts a spirit who murders anyone who speaks his name five times in the mirror. The film is famously set in the iconic Cabrini-Green housing project, a place Vanlee called home before the last vestiges of the project were demolished in 2011.

“I don’t like that movie and how it’s attached to Cabrini-Green,” Vanlee said. “There was nothing scary about growing up in Cabrini. Forget candy man, we had other things going on there.”

Vanlee has poured her frustrations with the film into a book, “Damn, Candy Man: He Ain’t All that I Lived Beneath the Candy Lady for Years.” The book is about Vanlee’s life growing up in Cabrini-Green in the 1970s and 1980s. According to the book’s Amazon profile, the Cabrini-Green Vanlee knew and loved was about family, community, relationships, triumph and survival.

Author Doreen Ambrose-Van Lee

Cooley High in Reverse

Dedicated To Ben Wilson of Simeon High School

by Doreen Ambrose-Van Lee

Sometimes I watch the '70's movie 'Cooley High' in reverse

Because for me the ending is the worst.

I figure if I view it backwards, the main character Cochise can rise up and be

with his friends, Preach and Pooter and the boys could all have fun cutting

classes and joy riding and throwing caution to the wind. The guys could all go

to quarter parties, prom and graduate,

They'd stand on the corner and sing

and drink cheap wine and never meet such a twisted fate.

Then Martha wouldn't have had to raise that hatchet, The two women that

'Chise and Preach duped wouldn't have a habit. Their teacher, Mr. Mason

wouldn't have wasted his breath or his time, Preach's girlfriend,

Brenda wouldn't have fallen for a line-- Of poetry and pure testosterone,

And the two villains Robert and Stone Would slide back into their holes and

no one would know where they are, And the world wouldn't lose another

ghetto super star. Cochise could get his basketball scholarship to college and

go on to make Chicago proud, He'd be ranked up there with Michael Jordan

somewhere in the clouds. But I am dreamer... Yep, sometimes, I watch the

movie Cooley High in reverse,

Because I'd rather see Cochise having fun than lying in a hearse.

Represent for Your Candy Lady, Man, Store, Truck, etc. I will post your comments shortly.

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If...

Growing up in Cabrini Green in the 70's and 80's in Chicago's notorious Cabrini Green,

If our parents did not have higher aspirations for our lives than what they'd seen,

Where would we be?

If you have a scab on a scar and you don't pick at it

It will eventually get better

If you are beginning a sentence I think you should use a capital letter,

Can't you see?

If you are trying to get somewhere in life

I think you should take ardent strides and keep moving forward,

Each morning that you wake up and greet the day

Keep on getting up and move on towards...

if you are worth your weight in gold and take ignorant comments with a grain of salt,

If you know that you know that you know that you are standing on your own two feet ten toes down on firm asphalt!

Proclaim that you are free...

If you love someone express it to them put your big boy or big girl pants on please don't let too much time elapse don't you wait until too much time passes,

In the words of the late great Teena Mariei in her monstrous jam in '88, Ooh La La, If you are true to one person there is no need too appeal to the masses!

If you are forthright, honest and always straight to the point,

Never stoop or buckle under pressure let your inner glow anoint.

Please believe me.

I'llll say again, if you have a scar and a scab has formed on it don't pick iat it because it won't get any better,

If you are going to begin a new sentence you'd better use a capital letter

Can't you see?

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