Drug Dealer’s Poetry: Finding God Between the Traps and the Trauma
THIS STORY IS ABOUT FAITH, SURVIVAL, AND REDEMPTION
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Meet Malachi “Psalm” James — a South Circular lad navigating postcode pressure, pain, and the promise of something greater. This is where his story begins.
SCENE ONE: SOUTH CIRCULAR
[Scene opens: A grey Dublin morning. Rain slicks the pavement like sweat off a boxer’s brow. Bins line the alley. Broken glass glints like unspoken rules.]
Malachi “Psalm” James stands outside the flats on South Circular Road, Dublin.
Grey RICA hoodie. Two phones. One always on silent. The other? Ringing with reminders that boys like him don’t retire — they disappear.
He’s one of many caught in the rhythm of Irish street life, where postcode politics replace passports, and silence is the mother tongue.
Inside his pocket, his little brother’s school photo. Folded four times. Nearly creased out of existence.
His gran says he was born with something holy in him. She calls it “The Look.” Like he knew something before the world ever said a word.
But here? Growing up Black and Irish in Dublin, knowing too much gets you marked.
Psalm learned to watch with his mouth shut.
Eyes always scanning.
Across the street, two lads in black Canada Goose parkas clock him. Not enemies. Not friends. Just silence and suspicion stitched into fabric. That’s how postcode politics work.
Psalm nods once. Non-confrontational. Neutral. Nothing to prove — except he’s still standing.
A local kid speeds past on a stolen bike.
Someone’s mother is crying behind a third-floor window.
And Psalm?
He leans on a brick wall that never saw peace and whispers:
“This ain’t where I’m meant to end. But it’s where I had to start.”
SCENE TWO: PSALM & SMOKE
[Saturday night in Dublin. Phones buzzing. Feet pacing. Psalm sits in his room, one sock on, one sock lost somewhere in the chaos. The streets outside are loud, but his spirit? Louder.]
There’s a certain hollowness to Saturday nights when you’re the plug.
Everyone wants something. A hit. A half. A handout.
But no one wants him.
Not really.
His line’s pinging off the hook—feens sweating for zaza, lads trying to front, a girl he knows he shouldn’t text back typing and deleting.
He stares at it all like static.
Then slides open the Nike box.
The personal’s in there. Rolled tight. Set aside from the rest.
Not for business.
For pain.
He lights it.
The first drag numbs the noise.
The second? It opens something.
Not a door. A wound.
And suddenly, the contradictions hit too hard to ignore:
Smoke in his lungs. Scripture on his nightstand.
A Bible his nanny gave him.
Still wrapped in the soft cloth she used to wipe her hands before dinner.
It glows faint under the red light in his room—like it’s watching.
He’s laughed at it for years. Called it decoration.
But tonight?
Tonight, his soul’s bleeding too loud to pretend.
“Only God can fill that void,” she used to say.
And he used to nod—half-high, half-listening, fully broken.
He never believed her.
But that was before the loneliness stopped being poetic.
Before the street applause turned to silence.
Before his little brother asked him why they never say grace.
He stares at the joint between his fingers. It’s halfway done.
Like him.
Then he opens the Bible.
It falls open—Psalm 34:18 staring back like it knew him.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
He reads it twice.
Then again.
It don’t condemn him.
It just catches him.
Like breath after drowning. Like hands after falling.
And in that haze of weed and whispered verses, Malachi Psalm James sees it:
The life he’s living is not survival.
It’s surrender.
And the Word?
It don’t judge him.
It just meets him.
Right there.
In the smoke. In the sin. In the silence.
SCENE THREE: THE BREAK BETWEEN BIBLES AND BAGS
[It’s cold. That kind of Dublin cold that bites, not chills.]
Psalm’s jacket is damp, sleeves heavy with the kind of street sweat you can’t shower off. He leans against the graffiti-tagged wall behind the off-license, one boot laced, the other barely hanging on. The streetlamp above him flickers — like it can’t decide if it wants to see him or not.
The verse is still echoing in his head.
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted." — Psalm 34:18
But right now?The Lord feels about as far as his da — some myth from childhood people tell you not to believe in.
In his right hand? A dime bag. Still warm from the pressure of a junkie’s palms.In his left? The Bible his nanny gave him.
Both saving lives.
But only one killing him to do it.
His burner phone buzzes again.
“U got dat?”
He doesn’t even reply.
Not tonight.
Because tonight he watched a kid — 14 maybe — get jumped over postcode beef his postcode never asked for.
Kid bled out in front of the chippers.
No name.
No next of kin.
Just another ‘you heard about that yoke last night?’ in a WhatsApp GC.
Psalm lit a joint and watched the ambulance lights reflect in puddles.
Didn’t move.
Didn’t blink.
Didn’t feel anything.
That scared him.
And when he walked away, hoodie up, Bible digging into his ribs from inside the jacket pocket — he knew:
This double life?
It’s not a split. It’s a slow death.
He gets home. Little brother asleep on the sofa, cartoons still playing.
And in that moment, the noise stops.
Psalm kneels beside him. Quiet. Hands trembling.
He opens the Bible. Not to read — to confess.
To cry like he hasn’t in years.
And just before he shuts it… his brother stirs.
Looks at him with half-sleep eyes.
“You alright, bro?”
Psalm nods.
But he ain’t.
Because being alright means knowing what side you’re on.
And Psalm?
He’s standing in the middle of a war between his faith and his hustle.
And God?
He’s not thundering from the clouds.
He’s whispering through a kid’s question:
"You alright, bro?"
And that might be the realest gospel Psalm’s ever heard.
SCENE FOUR: BILL ON HIS HEAD
[Sunday morning. But it don’t feel holy.]
Phone rings. Burner #2.
The one that only vibrates when it’s not about money — but about him.
Psalm glances at the screen: “Unknown.”
He lets it ring, but the pit in his stomach picks up anyway.
He already knows what this is.
Earlier in the week, he missed a drop.
Too many thoughts. Too much Scripture.
Not enough strategy.
And now?
There’s a rumour louder than any sermon in Dublin’s inner-city drug culture:
He owes.
A few bags. A few boys. One moment of slipping focus — and now there’s a bill on his head.
He scrolls WhatsApp — and there it is.
“Someone got a price on Psalm.”
No emoji. No follow-up. Just plain truth typed like scripture.
The group chat goes cold.
The same boys that hailed him as “solid” last week?
Now they ghost.
Even his plug — who he’s bailed out of sticky drops more than once —
Left his “am I good?” message on read,
but still had time to laugh at a meme.
Psalm exhales.
He sits down — edge of the mattress.
The hands over his face feel heavier than the hoodie on his back.
The tray still carries the half-smoked joint.
The Bible beside it still open to Psalm 91:
“He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge.”
But refuge don’t come easy when you’re a young Black man in Dublin —
not when gang violence and postcode politics decide your expiry date.
There’s no hotline for this kind of youth mental health crisis.
Just survival.
Just street diplomacy.
Just keeping your head down when your name’s flying higher than your hope.
In the next room, his little brother hums to himself —
the only real reminder that innocence still breathes in this place.
Psalm?
He feels his world folding inward.
Like dreams too big for his postcode.
Like clothes too stained to be salvaged.
He mutters to himself:
"This can't be the end of me. Not yet."
And just when it feels like the end—
The group chat lights up.
“We don’t move on Malachi. Not him.”
“Say what you want — he looked out when no one else did.”
“That man bought time for my cousin.”
Psalm stares.
It ain’t redemption.
It ain’t trust.
But it’s grace.
The kind of grace you only earn in the streets of Dublin —
not through sermons, but through survival.
Because sometimes?
Grace doesn’t sound like gospel.
It sounds like silence —
when they had every reason to end you.
✍️ SCENE FIVE: WHERE FAITH MET FIRE
[Monday morning. First time in a while the sky looks clear.]
Psalm walks his little brother to school.
One hand in his pocket. The other?
Gripping the boy’s lunch bag like it’s the most sacred thing he owns.
They don’t talk much.
But the silence ain’t heavy this time — it’s held.
He watches his brother walk through the gates.
Backpack bouncing. Hood up. Hope intact.
Psalm lights a smoke on the way back —
not because he needs it…
but because routine takes time to kill.
At the flats, he don’t go upstairs.
He walks past.
Keeps going.
Down the canal.
Where the pigeons don’t judge.
Where the water don’t ask who you were last week.
He sits on the bench near the big mural —
the one they painted after Jamal died.
Pulls the Bible out his coat.
A little wrinkled.
Edges ash-stained.
But open — right where it fell last night.
Psalm 34:18.
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
He laughs. Not the happy kind.
The “how did I not see this before” kind.
Because this whole time?
He wasn’t looking for a way out.
He was looking for a way through.
The streets, the sin, the silence — it all carved a deeper channel.
Not a death sentence.
A purpose pre-written.
He texts one person.
"I’m done. But not finished."
No context.
They’ll either understand or they won’t.
But for the first time in his life —
Psalm don’t feel like he’s waiting to die.
He feels like he's learning to live.
FINAL SCENE: WHEN FAITH FINDS A WAY 🤲🏾
Malachi never gave a sermon.
Never dropped a testimony in a pulpit or posted a bible verse on the ‘Gram.
But this?
This was sacred.
Because sometimes God don’t meet you in church.
He meets you in your kitchen —
While your tea goes cold,
And your world still smells like smoke.
Faith didn’t arrive in scripture.
It arrived in the silence after the storm —
In the space between fear and one more breath.
And fire?
It didn’t burn him.
It refined him.
He’s not perfect.
Still two steps from danger.
Still got numbers saved he should’ve deleted.
Still healing in a city that don’t hand out grace cheap.
But today?
He knows he’s covered.
Because when God found him,
He wasn’t clean.
He wasn’t ready.
He wasn’t even sure He believed.
But God still showed up —
And said, “Stay standing. I’m not finished.”
This is what it looks like
When a young man don’t get saved by a scripture,
But by a still moment
Where peace finally felt possible.
Not viral.
Not loud.
Just real.
And that’s the gospel Malachi walks with now:
Where faith met fire —And he came out whole.
OUTRO
🔄 TAKEAWAY
Malachi “Psalm” James isn’t just a character — he’s a mirror.
For every young man raised by the weight of postcode politics and silence dressed as strength.
This story isn’t about survival.
It’s about what happens when God becomes more than a Sunday idea — and finally interrupts your Friday night spiral.
You don’t need to be perfect to hear Him.
You just need to be present.
📚 RESOURCE
Spark Change – A Dublin-based initiative working with vulnerable youth through faith, creative mentorship, and cultural restoration.
For boys who feel forgotten and brothers who’ve lost more than they can name.
Visit: sparkchange.ie
🔗 INTERNAL LINKS FOR RELATED READING
- What Being Called a “Loud Black Woman” Really Means
A story of identity, power, and refusing to shrink.
- He Loved Me In His Way — But I Needed More
The poetry of pain, and what emotional distance really costs us.
Read here → www.in10macy.com/10-blogs/modern-love-files-he-loved-me-in-his-way----but-i-needed-more
- 10 Ways the Hood Taught Me Emotional Intelligence
Masculinity decoded — no buzzwords, just real codes we grew up on.
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