Orphaned by a nation that castigates us at every turn
Looking to any individual acts of violence as
A justification for a condemnation of an entire race
How do we get to middle ground, the golden mean
To find a way forward
A way out of this never-ending cycle of outright war and unfettered bloodshed
A way out of this spiral toward the death of all things good
Forward to a way of peace
Armistice
Without swallowing the bitter pill of business as usual, which only brings us back to strife
How do we turn down the violence of us versus them
Them versus US
Mortal enemies on this battlefield of life
What is the escape route from this labyrinth of animosity and remorse
No one will yield
who holds the secret unction that can heal the scars of a crippled nation
How do we find the pathway to a new story
And stop the reiteration of the old
The story that has never furnished us with real hope for a better tomorrow
And explodes or collapses on an extraordinarily regular and predictable path every time we play that old record
Who will hear a new story
A new narrative
A new anecdote about how we can live in actual, factual harmony and altruism
Before we destroy ourselves.
Not Again
I do not crave Your patronage
As You suspect or hope
While You grow weary of looking for plausible
Ways to reach down
Dirty Your hands
To help me
And my kind
I do not seek Your ingenuity or input
Into what will make my life better
Or make it more like Yours
While You test these newly-formed but tenuous bonds of trust
I refuse to be a party to Your abortive attempts to educate Yourself
At my expense
To understand the language of back-lancing scars
And spirit-crushing humiliations
To obtain knowledge I already possess
To help you feel better about Yourself
I will not enter into that turnstile of time
With You another time
Only to once again find myself ultimately lost
Locked inside the same old prison
Alone
Again
What should You do
What do I suggest You do
Find one child
Lock yourself into his or her life
Feel the darkness with them
Educate them about the ways of Your world
And help them navigate it
For the days are sad
And tomorrow is guaranteed to no one
Especially not to a Black child
Be Careful What You Ask of Me
As we paddle life’s stream from one crisis
To the next just around the bend
You ask me to travel with You
On this epic adventure to understanding me
Us
While this seems to you to be a harmless pursuit
And something we can revisit on a regular basis
Keep in mind the hidden damage to my heart and psyche
As we paddle into a dark world
Unreal to You
All too real to me
It is hard to blithely revisit a history never acknowledged
Never cradled in the bosom of Our nation
Never offered comfort
Or care
Or recognition
Or rectification
There are so many blind spots just outside Your peripheral vision
It makes my spirit weep
And my bones ache
At the thought of the retelling of the story
Perhaps I can be one of the pillars in repairing Your knowledge deficits
But I must also protect myself in the process
You will not
You cannot see it
Unless I tell you about it
You cannot feel the pain
Nor the weight of histories we carry
Your history
Unless I tell you about it
You cannot stand in my place
Or walk in my shoes
We both know this
But
I will try my best to tell you about it
Again
Traffic Stop
Traveling cross-country during the lockdown
Beautiful landscapes
Interrupted by a traffic stop
My gut knows what this is about
Although my white friend will take more time
To process it
She pulls to the right shoulder
Once she is certain he is following us
He walks up on my side
The passenger-side
And looks in the window
And tries not to stumble over his words
Once he is aware that only the passenger is Black
And not the driver
Stuttering through
“Well, you were following too closely”
License and information about the rental requested
She digs out her license
I do not
I hand him the paperwork for the RV
He invites her back to his car
So he can write out a warning
Gregariously saying
“No ticket this time
Watch your spacing
Keep it two to three seconds’ distance”
She goes back to the car
Stands on his driver-side
He chats her up
About the cost of the van
How he needs a vacation
How she looks relaxed
Writes out his bogus warning
“10 miles under the speed limit
All paperwork in order
Following too closely”
Three days later
Yes, the time it took Christ to rise from the dead
She has an “aha” moment
An epiphany
Replaying the event out loud
Rereading the warning
She realizes the stop was not about her
Or about doing anything wrong
It was about what he thought he saw
Through our windshield
Black people
On the road
Spending money
Being carefree
But I know
Even if she doesn’t
That we are never free
There is always someone
Who thinks we are doing the things
They should be able to do
And by so doing,
Deprive them
Driving cars
They should have
Going to schools
They should be in
That we are living their best lives
And feel obligated
To terrorize us
Out of having fun
Remind us
Hound us back to our proper position
Send us back to their plantations
To do their work for them
Take back the things we have earned
And own
Returning everything to them
Even though the
y are not entitled to it
It is the existential and everlasting rut
In which we all live
As unending as the rivers of time and history
And yes
Unbowed
We will endure it
Knowing that
Freedom
Opportunity
Exemption
Will only ever touch a few of our lives at a time
How You Hate to Rape Me
Your actions and your leering gaze
Where your friends cannot see you lustily looking my way
Make a lie of every negative word you speak to or about me
You call me nigger, whore, dog
Yet you long to lay cradled inside me
You long to take hold of flesh that was never yours to possess
To poke and prod
To seek love and finding none
You seek to ravage, consume, annihilate
Oh, to feel the smooth insides
To touch the heart and heat of power
That you can neither define nor imprison
You with your clan of friends, holding me in place
Demanding that I move for you as if you were an authentic lover
You plunge your corrupted flesh into the secret spaces
you allegedly despise
Yet yearn to embrace
You take me at gunpoint
Painfully pressed against my skull
Knives held against my neck
Flashing your torchlight and badge in my face
As justification and reminders (to yourself) of your corruptible power
You spill the terror of your seed upon the ground and on me
Seeking to water down what?
My race
My color
My self
Your craving for what I have
What I am
For what you can never be
Diminishes you in the light of day and shows you have no true power
Derogating my estimation of who and what you are
I bear the shame in the public eye
While you hide yours in the recesses of your perverted heart
Who is the punk?
The bitch?
The beast?
Who is the coward here?
Because
after all
I am still here
Living in the light of life
While you continue to tuck your sins away in the alcoves of your spirit
Knowing fully well that you are less than a man
Less than human
And although you may be able to periodically terrorize me
Rape me
Even kill me
You can never own me.
Tale of Two Georges
Leaning over my body
Whose name is George
Learning my oath to hold all life sacred
Except for that George that the policeman forgot was under his knee
While he was conversating
And protecting and serving
Apologizing for the violations
I must perform to learn
The building blocks
And substances
That make us all human
And not “other”
As our society dictates
Periodically asking for help
So that I do not cut the wrong venous conduit
prematurely
Offering thanks for a life
Lived on the shoulders
Of those who have been cut down prematurely
My lab partner leaves and I am elated
To spend time communing with George unencumbered
And exploring the gifts he has to offer me
Shutting out the noise of the world
And its violence
I learn to listen
In the silence
Between the words
Between the heartbeats
For all that is unsaid
I learn to hear the pleas of others
When they do not know the lingo
I learn to read their expressions
See their almost-hidden pain
Interpret body language and movement
To comprehend what the body seeks to teach me
There in the silence
In the cadaver lab
I learn to translate and transmute all of these little “nothings”
Into relief for others
There in the silence
I learn my job
My profession
My definition
My job is to listen
I listen
If only that policeman had been taught to listen
That other George
Would still be alive
America, Something Is Wrong
America, something is wrong
We are the exotic and perverse fruit that hangs from those
Sweet, sweet Magnolia trees
Reminding You of a home filled with love
And reminding me of your malignant hate
America, something is wrong
We are the products of an American education system
Schooled at underfunded dropout factories
Struggling to touch a life perceived
But still dangling just outside of our grasp
And still living a hard and dichotomous life
America, something is wrong
We are the victims of Your deadly and quick judgments
Judgments with neither the ring of justice nor mercy
Only character assassinations
We are the many generations left behind
Widows and widowers who have lost their spouses
Yet there is no name for a mother seeing her child lying dead in the street
Although it happens with regularity
And yet
We remain bitter, bold, and only partially broken
Living a bicameral existence
Because we understand Your intentions for us
Even if You will not speak them clearly
America, something is wrong
You are afraid
Good so am I
This is a fear you have
Bred
Engendered
Cultivated
Nurtured
And now You cringe at the thought and sight of what You have finally birthed
Painstakingly brought forth by the midwife of time
A bastard child who hates You as much as You hate it
An imperfect reproduction of You
A lot less white
Bearing Your family name
A mongrel of Your shame
The shame You try to hide away from the clear light of reality
by using faulty history
Born with a caul over its face
Because it was never meant to breathe
Shame at what You have conceived in the shadows of Your heart
America, something is wrong
We are the walking reminders of an assortment of sins
The sins you now seek to turn into corpses at every opportunity
America, something is wrong
And until you can shake free from your own shackles of shame
You bind us all together
In a bizarre dance of rejection and reconciliation
America, something is wrong
Juneteenth
From Lincoln to Granger
To the enslaved, imprisoned, and powerless
&
nbsp; A two-year journey lost on the lips of a nation still embattled
And now a holiday to be celebrated by all
Freedom
A single word of curse and blessing
But the blessing was thwarted
The delay of a government agent killed on the way with the good news
or
Withholding the news until the final slave-driven cotton harvest can be brought in
For profit
What did this new freedom bring
Slaves made free
To do what
Absolute equality of rights and rights of property between master and slave
New relationships forged between employee and employer
Free but not free
Slave but not Freeman
Now free in the country we do not know or understand
Freedom that left broken families – broken
Broken tongues and languages – lost
A broken spirit
A new status on paper
Or not
Of falsities that our lives would be the same
A nation bathed in the idea that whiteness is superior
That it is the final goal
The ultimate state of being
A new life without simple protections afforded most Americans
We celebrate the end of human trafficking
Except it wasn’t
Making an unhealthy contract
A perilous and corrupted deal with the devil
Yielding futures that have remained little changed
A new life coupled with complaints
Complications
Complicity
Conflagrations
Confusions
Counterfeit protection
Because someone must still be the lowest caste
We see with clarity
That the languorously moving march to freedom
With laws that wholly protect all citizens
Has brought about de-evolution of the American spirit
This involuntary arch
Brings us into a new era
But by our own choosing
Also drags with it broken shards of past centuries of hate
So that we can continue with the detrimental obsession that rightness is whiteness
Two years and now two centuries later
Our lives remain virtually unchanged
The patrollers are dressed differently
They have traded in their tattered rags for riot gear
Swapped out their whips for tasers and bullets
But our lives remain unhelpfully and unhealthily
the same
We Are Alike, You and I
You and I are so alike