Category: Uncategorized

What do I call

this space

where you once stood?

How do I tell

the silence

to be still?

When dinner is ready,

there is no shadow

to dine with me.

In the places we haunted,

there are no echoes or whispers

of your voice.

No trace of your perfume.

No watching the candles

glow, caressing your

bronze skinned richness

alongside my fingers.

Where we lived,

no sighs of love

disrupting the quiet night.

What do I call this space?

‘Loneliness’ is too sad a name.

‘Alone’ is too cynical and stark.

‘Freedom’ is a lie.

What do I call this space?

Come back and tell me.

How do I read these headlines

in my skin,

and stay ‘neutral’?

How, and still deny? How, and still absolve?

How do I view the photos of all these

grim atrocities done to black bodies

posted by the demons who did them,

and say “It has no part in me?”

How do I stand for an anthem that

proudly hails

killing my ancestors?

How can I ignore

the flag of a heritage of hate?

Avert your eyes, if it pleases,

and veil yourselves behind the

tresses of your hair,

put the lie in your lungs and give it breath,

and point your fingers at me,

who did nothing at all,

if it comforts you.

But the blood cries out from the soil,

and the photos so freely, bravely displayed

(and sold as postcards) have not faded.

The blackface figurines and sack dolls

still abide in the curiosity and antique shops,

and the mass, unmarked graves

are not unseen.

Nor are the ones who put the

black bodies in there.

I read these headlines,

but I’ve seen them play out too,

and the play doesn’t seem to end.

So friend, if that is what you (say you) truly are to me,

don’t ask me to separate myself, and deny, and say

I’m not at risk.

At any given moment,

on any given day,

someone can lash out

at me because of my color, and

tomorrow could very well be

my last day in this world.

But keep your eyes averted,

and yell louder,

peeking through your fingers as

I turn into a headline.

Embracing you,

much like a drop of dew

’round a seedling.

Cradled in dark innocence,

we wait

together

for the heat of ourselves

to become

the light of the world.

Unblended

Disposed

the innocent souls

of the abused.

The product of

big, sweaty bodies

and hard grunts

against soft brown bellies

in the small hours of the night

turning mourning.

Taken by light skinned people who enjoyed

the pleas and cries of the ‘savages’ to not be violated.

And so the innocent souls were taken:

to steep cliffs, swift rivers, unmarked graves,

and left in the darkest of shadows in the

deepest of cold for the beasts and birds.

The Black women stripped of pride,

of clothing,

of their own children from their own loins,

who would not bear the sins of unbidden masters.

Even the pale women of the false gentry demanded

the progeny of broken vows be slain, and sometimes

did the killing.

So many innocent souls

born to sorrow,

sent back to their Creator

by Black hands that would not

swaddle their shame.

Bed-wench hearts broken,

beating in Black breasts

that would not suckle and sanctify

the cries of their rapists’ sins.

Black bodies blighted

by blended flesh,

bloated by foreign sperm,

took back their lives and rid the world of others,

but never reclaimed their own

innocent souls.

The Unblended,

blended still.

Loved,

forlorn,

and forgiven.

Sun-baked bodies inch along the furrowed rows

of green and sunset colored crops.

Music drifts to the sky,

prayers wrapped in melody,

praise wrapped in harmony,

in the key of hard lessons

of a mortal life as yet

unbalanced

by deliverance and freedom.

 

The ones who fall are mourned,

and the ones who come into the world

are celebrated in songs of hope and joy,

but rocked to sleep in knowing silence…

The terror of the tyranny of those others,

thunderclouds

that break in torrents of hate,

raining blood that cries out from the ground

in streaks of upward lightning.

 

The old hands, bereft of strength, yet full of wisdom,

clasp the hands of their descendants, and pass

the tools and torches

of their endurance,

as they surrender themselves,

releasing their souls.

 

They wait to welcome us again,

and walk the fields of open sky,

unconfined, unbound by furrowed roads,

free to hold hands once more,

free to love,

and truly

free.