WAR JOURNALS FOR GENERALS

As far back as I can remember, war has always been stitched into the fabric of my life.
My childhood was raised in the shadow of death. If it wasn’t screaming outside my window, it was bleeding through the television screen, echoing through movie theaters, or riding on the other end of a late night phone call. Violence wasn’t an event where I came from , it was atmosphere. It hung over us like cigarette smoke in a closed room.
Death starts off distant… blurry… like fog circling your existence. But over time it creeps closer, wrapping around your lungs until you can’t breathe without tasting it. Before long, murder, homicide, revenge, survival , that becomes the language of your thoughts because it’s the only language the environment speaks.
And truthfully?
I fell in love with it.
I was a young, impressionable mind seduced by the mythology of violence. If Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone weren’t unloading magazines on the big screen, then old gangster flicks, spaghetti westerns, and kung-fu classics filled the void. I grew up seeing the world in two lanes: cowboys and Indians. Shoot first or get buried. Be quicker than Quick Draw McGraw or learn how to throw hands like a Shaw Brother when you ain’t have a pistol tucked.
Unlike these fabricated gangsters manufactured today, we came up in a different era. We didn’t have drill music narrating our destruction. We rode through the chaos listening to BDP, Public Enemy, Kool G Rap, EPMD, Rakim & Eric B. artists who mixed street poetry with jewels, knowledge, and survival codes. They taught us to Get Paid in Full while feeding us lessons about discipline, spirituality, and the harsh mathematics of the streets.
That contradiction shaped me.
Because somehow, in the middle of all the violence, there was wisdom. In the middle of the destruction, there was purpose. And through all of it… I survived.
Now here I stand, deep into the ninth inning of a game most people never make it out of alive. Not too many eyewitnesses remain who can tell these stories firsthand. Most of the eyes that saw what I saw are permanently closed. And the ones still open carry scars the world can’t see.
Because once you’ve watched life leave a man’s body, your tears change.
They don’t fall the same anymore.
Mine turned cold long ago. I wear them on my face like permanent reminders of the contradiction that raised me , the pain of loss mixed with the twisted celebration of death. Two opposing forces pulling at a young boy’s soul until insanity starts making sense. Yin and Yang. Joy and suffering. Love and war.
Sometimes you begin to wonder:
Is hurting others the only way to numb the hurt inside yourself?
Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.
My story is written in my name: Skarz , short for War Skarz. A symbol of bloodshed, survival, and wounds that never fully heal. Because broken skin represents more than pain… it represents separation. The splitting apart of something that was once whole. Just like friendships. Families. Crews. Neighborhoods.
Every war has a frontline.
In my hood, that frontline was Front Street.
My name is Skarz.
And these are my War Stories.
Dedication
Dedicated to the ones who paved the way, guided me through the darkness, and stood beside me when the skies stayed cloudy. To the few who believed in me enough to endure my flaws, my anger, my confusion, and my storms , thank you.
Because even after the longest nights, eventually…
the sun still finds a way to shine.