The agonizing wails of postpartum depression
of child abandonment
From a nation trying to circumnavigate its responsibility
For a problem she has brought to her own shores
Snatching away the teat from those left wanting
Eroding all trust
Leaving her bastard children vengeful and resentful
The reddening earth from each battle we fight
Trying to bring about some reckoning, resolution, fairness
Serves as a metric to our growing enmity
Which has few boundaries
Children, who in Your self-righteousness
You have carelessly fathered and left behind
Nor wish to claim as Your progeny
With mothers no one loves
And whom You no longer wish to recognize as Your passion
The music has gotten away from the melodist
The dance has devolved into a tormented and ragged musical
Which we must reenact every few decades
Coming no closer to resolutions or solutions
In My Rearview Mirror
In my rearview mirror
I hear the sirens long before I see the lights
Before the vehicle comes into view
Is it a fire truck?
An ambulance?
Or a police car?
Two of these cause no trepidation
No quickening of pulse.
When I look again in my rearview mirror
I see the police lights
Rushing toward me
Sirens blaring
Getting louder
Closer
I am certain they are not coming for me
Well, reasonably certain
I have done nothing wrong
I go over my internal checklist
Speed limit – ok
Correct lane – check
License in purse – yes
Registration and insurance in the glove box – yes
Everything I might need to reach for clearly visible – yes…
I think
Tags up to date – probably
All should be well
But I know what I look like
I know how the world sees me
I know that sitting or driving in my car I fit the proverbial profile
Black
Too dark sunglasses
Dreadlocks
Sex, unknown
Probably singing too loudly, even though my windows are closed
Out of fear
I slow down
I drift further to the right
I try, with some sense of urgency,
To blend in with those driving much too slowly
I struggle to get my breathing under control
Loosening my grip on the steering wheel
Checking to see if there is anything else that looks suspicious on the front seats
Even though I know in my heart and in my logical mind that
Nothing and everything can be suspicious
They finally pass me by
I almost drop my head to the steering wheel in relief
A trickle of sweat running down my back
Because of the fear
The real fear is this:
One day this will not end so well.
America’s Music
As I drift off to sleep
I hear and feel a concussive blast which shakes my house
And I know the streets are alive again tonight
Pulsing with
Fires and violence
Tears and screams
Sweat and force
Fists and batons raised
I live upstream from tonight’s violence
So it probably will not touch my home
Nor take my life
We can be assured that little will be achieved
save venting of outrage
We will still gain no freedoms
We will secure no justice
The ephemeral hush is interrupted by a staccato of gunshots
That pierce my heart
My psyche is startled
But hardly shocked
The flaring of nostrils
The rhythmic chants
The stamping of feet as they struggle to push the march forward
The beating of fists against riot shields
And clubs against heads
Bass notes played by helicopters not too high above us
By pilots who have not yet realized
That this is all part of the native song of America
Our national anthem of greed, violence, suppression, and oppression
To which we have all learned to dance and dutifully accept
Numb to the News
The news has become so repetitious
It has become almost boring
Esoteric
Unbelievable
Unless you are of color
Little girls with their molars coming in
Sleeping on grandma’s sofa
Dead
Sleeping with your Boo in the middle of the night
Anticipating your morning shift
Dead
Skittles
Dead
Violin
Dead
Hoodie
Dead
Suspect handcuffed
Running backwards
While holding a weapon on two officers
Dead
Suspect handcuffed
In the back seat
Of a patrol car
Shoots himself in the head
Dead
Traffic stop
Dead
These and many more deaths can be dismissed with a single phrase
“I was in fear of my life”
Perhaps we should pass out cards
to facilitate and streamline the news reporters’ jobs,
As well as the angst and the agony that follow
No repentance for crimes
No remorse for loss of lives
Presumptive guilt
Injustice meted out with “evidence” as flimsy as cirrus clouds
Not to be too seriously investigated
Presumptive guilt
Presumptive penalty
Death
Snake oil salesman telling us it is all in our imagination
We are blowing things out of proportion
We are wrong about
Brutality doled out by bullies
Seeking to extinguish the brands called “Black” and “Brown”
Seeking to eradicate “others”
To bolster their own insubstantial pride
And reassure them of their moral superiority
Because
You cannot be superior without someone else being inferior
You cannot have a top with no bottom
Up with no down
Upper hand without a lower hand
Excellence without “less than”
Nobility without serfs
Rank without file
Insider without outsider
Us with them
Masters without slaves
Rhetoric
The constant din of rhetoric
Rotting away even the vaguest of hopes
That things will change
Get better
Police strutting like cocks in a henhouse
Champing at their bits, clutching their clubs
waiting for the
curfew hour, and the beatings to begin
Acting out orders embarrassing even to the Germans
While others kneel and walk with the protesters
Numbered quotas of arrests and beatings
Solidification of hard hearts
Tightening of helmets and flak jackets
The erosion of freedoms
By plague
And the wellspring overflowing from a deep well of loathing
The broken and boarded-up windows of the dreams of others
While our blood stains every sidewalk
Prayer warriors offering thanksgiving
for having come this far
By faith
Which is where exactly?
Clinging again to the dubious threads of anticipation
For another watered-down version of slavery
Which should appease us for another decade
It is a ghostly form, an apparition
That walks among us
One that can never truly become whole or visible to all
While this river of blood continues to flow
In every city and lives in every battered soul
We Still Stand (Noble and Proud)
Trapped beneath the floor
Underneath the glass ceiling
We can never break our stride
Nor sow our downcast spirit
While we wait for the breakthrough
Whether a tramp strolling by
With all belongings in a prized supermarket basket
“The End is Nigh!”
Deemed cagey by the hue of his skin
Rather than his message or the state of his mind
Or a bird boy checking out his charges in the park
Accused of harassment and molestation
Abundant as the unplowed fields of our 40-acre “gift”
Rising and rising again like a zephyr
Undaunted by Your desires to erase us
Grateful that our forebears possessed indomitable spirits
And the fortitude to believe and hold fast
To their dreams of freedom
Of better tomorrows
But at a heavy cost
Their lives
And the dearest things to us/them
The lives of their children
We continue to traverse this land
Pushing against the fetters of Your mind
And the cramped lives You have carved out for us
No matter our station nor lot in this life
We still stand as noble and proud people
Unbowed and unashamed
Knowing that
You may kill a few of us
But You will never destroy us
A Shocking New Race War
This newest war on racism is new to You
Not to me
You have discovered that you do not know me
Trying to learn more about me and my “kind”
Stuff I have always known
Angling to increase Your count
Of how many Black bodies
You can call friend
Even though we are not
Never have been
Fawning over us like new expensive toys You bought Your children for Easter
Picking up and putting up with
Choosing us as the cheapest, droopy puppy You took pity on while shopping at some mall
Continuing to shove and steer us into roles
Ill-suited for us both
The proverbial square peg into the tiny round hole of Your design
I need you to stand with me and walk beside me
Not rushing ahead of me
because You know better than I
what should happen to me next
The road is unfamiliar to You
But not to me
I have traveled this road many times
Literally spent the days of my life upon it
Like some worthless coin that goes in and out of fashion
I lick the wounds from the last two, or is it three, race wars
For I have lived a long time
And try not to remember that You were the one
Who fell behind
every time
And then dropped out of the race
Without a backward glance
Abandoned the war
Leaving me dangling in the breeze
Alone
Again, naturally
Outside Your world
in the cold
With yet another heavy noose coiled around my neck
Holding me in place
How Could We Not Have Appreciated That
How could we have judged ourselves so harshly and so poorly
So poorly that we did not recognize
Ourselves as beautiful
As graceful
As stylish
As magical
And unique
Nightly nestled between my mother’s knees
As she ruthlessly corralled my “nappy” and unmanageable hair
Into neat cornrows
Determined to plow the paths straight
So that the rows remained intact for at least 24 hours
Gently applying Bergamot
Less so the stinky Glover’s Mange
To force little seedlings to grow
How could we not have appreciated the beauty and art of that
Preteen years aligned with
An overwhelming desire
to have “big girl” hair
Sunday morning
Snuggled between my mother’s breasts
Seated by the stove
The dreaded curling iron moving deftly
To make ringlets
That would barely last through church
Chastised for moving too much
Trying to preserve the tops of my ears
To only end up with
Burnt knuckles instead
With ribbons and my finest clothes
My Sunday-best
Topped off with patent leather shoes
How could we not have appreciated and celebrated the beauty and the art of that
Many years and dollars later
Hair
Mutated
Weaponized
Revolutionized
And much to my mother’s dismay
Transformed back into “nappy” hair
Cake cutters and Afro Combs
Adorned the largest crown the little seedlings could produce
Beautiful in its message
Soft as lamb’s wool in its texture
Colorized to highlight its singularity
I wore a blond streak in mine
Individualized to sing each souls song
How could we not have appreciated the beauty and the art of that
Greasily Gerried
Traveling back in time
To ringlets that would last for months
Braidable
Moldable
Almost too long to manage
Who would have thought all this could be birthed from such paltry seedlings
How could we not have appreciated the beauty and the art of that
Now braided
Or locked
Or plaited
Or extensioned
Or Afroed
Or dyed
Or fried
Sending new messages to a deaf world
A message that says
We are indeed individuals
Each one of a kind
And we may wear our crowns of hair
Our crowns of beauty
Our mother’s glory
And God
’s glory
In any manner we choose
Because we are beautiful
Too long languishing and not seeing
Ourselves as we are
How could we not have appreciated the beauty and the art
The beauty we continue to make of every part of our bodies and our lives
In spite of,
Or is it because of,
All we continue to endure
How could we not have appreciated the beauty and the art of all that we are
Why We Beat Our Children
Born into a world that understands the gross mishandling of people
As property
Importing forms of punishment
We ourselves disdain
Dealing with the pain in our own microcosms
Trying to right a long and terrible wrong
Born with the invisible psychological scars
Matching the physical scars on our ancestors’ backs
How do you keep a child safe and alert
How do you corral a free spirit
Without destroying it
How do you clear away the cobwebs of disobedience
The randomness of thought
How do you manage the natural disagreeableness of teens and preteens
And spawn a new and improved version of the thing you love most
You use what you have learned
From my grandmother telling her daughter
To go get a switch
To her
Telling me
To go get the belt
The emotional anguish of that long walk
To get the instrument of your own torture
To the trauma indelibly marking
A relationship that could have been different
Maybe
How do we try to keep our children safe?
We use what we have learned
We beat them
We restrain them
We hold them in check
So that they learn to obey commands
Especially from white police
But we cannot have it both ways
As we eventually learn
We cannot have the warm and cuddly relationship presented on TV
And have children we are certain
Will return to our arms safely
So we pass on this hateful system of crime and punishment
Praying that they can see our love and agony beneath
And that they will find a new way to protect their own children
Or
Maybe
The world will change
And we will not have to work so hard
Trying to keep them safe
But probably not
A New Song