It scares you
A mysterious blend of several African nations
And multiple European countries
Coalesced to make you and me
We are sentenced to be locked into invisible battles
Fighting on two fronts
A plague of disease
A plague of the heart
In your blindness
You do not see
Or you do see me and fail to understand me
Or understand and refuse to acknowledge me
That the upward or downward trajectory of this nation
Our America
Depends on the fate you have in store for me
Is there a retrospective guide we can point to
For finding the way forward
Have we passed the mark of turning or the point of tipping
Lost in our never-ending whorl of degradation and denigration
We are alike
You and I
As you shove me aside
And lock me down
You do the same damage to yourself
Everything you have done to destroy me
You have done to your nation
Yourself
Your children
You cannot shoot me without seeing me
You cannot push me without touching me
You cannot spit on me without droplets of the same venomous slaver finding its way back to your face
You cannot hate me without seeing that beneath the color, I am you
You cannot lynch me without feeling the bite of the rope on your dirty hands
You cannot shun me without leaving a hole in your world
A testament to what your forefathers made
The strongest of us
Each in our own way
And as a testimony to the acrimonious history we share
We will come for you
Not with clubs
Or tear gas
Or firebombs
But with words
We are alike
You and I
And until you see this with clarity
This grand democracy we call home
This nation
Will never cease to burn
In the fires of hatred
Licking and caressing its wounds
Nursing its hurt pride
Shoring up its damaged spirits
We will be with you until the end of time
BIPOC
Sitting on a powder keg
Or in a cage
Waiting for the spark to ignite
Still trying to interpret the illegible runes of
How Black and Brown peoples are ineligible for a life of Liberty
Doors bolted shut
To keep us from
Stretching too far
Or reaching too high
Or overstepping the prescribed lines demarcated in the ever-shifting sands
The amorphous borders of the lives we are allowed to live
How many lives need to be lost
How much blood has to be spilled
To buy back our freedom
A thing, like our bodies, You had no right to own
And as You push back
Ever-faithful in reminding us that we are not human
Not really like You
Can never become You
Even though we have no desire to be
Now calling us BIPOCs
A different kind of beast
A euphemism
An abstraction that simply means
Not white
Or not white enough
Spoken Words Fail Me But…
Although words often seem to fail me when I try to speak
The writing still comes by instinct
An instinct long-buried
Not safe for polite society
Breaking out of the cookie-cutter mold of being a well-mannered possession
A slave to what makes others feel comfortable
I plumb the depths of a pain we are afraid to speak
And take repossession of a spirit lost in financial serfdom
Temporarily casting our outward-facing selves into obsolescence
Acknowledging the absolute logic of our tears
and agony
and outrage
Showing the unseemly details, the horrific density of the lives we live
We inadvertently open a new chapter of misery and degradation
And open old, unhealed wounds
Again
Our true spirits struggling to wriggle out of its safe space
No longer hidden from a world that wishes us
gone
But take heart
We will disappear from your sight again
In a few months
This broken world will return to business as usual
And our ambiguous losses will still be lost
Our freed spirits will once again
be locked in amber
Awaiting release in another age of outrage
Cultural Upheaval
As we ponder the next steps in our cultural overhaul
The scholars and artist souls are set ablaze
By a deluge of material that keeps us one step
Away from both insanity and utter despair
The crude and rude treatment repeatedly visited
With a violence and a vengeance
that leaves us breathless and confused
We go through the mechanical motions of our crafts
And inevitably come crashing back to the earth
And struggle with the mundanity of everyday life
What makes us crafters special
Also makes us strange
Riven from the hoods of our hearts
We remain intertwined with the struggles of our people
Alas, we too fit the profile
And will, in time
Be destroyed
Today, I Cannot…
Today, I cannot come out to play with You
It simply hurts too much
Today I cannot push down the pain
And the grief
Of the disheartening losses and daily devaluation of human lives
Today I cannot write or paint without crying
Filled with rage and fear because it never ends
Because it never ends
Because it never ends
Today I cannot go exploring with my guild-mates destroying monsters
Because
Apparently, I am a monster
Or I look a lot like one
Today I cannot stop thinking about
Ahmaud (jogging)
Breonna (sleeping)
Steven (going to work)
George (knelt upon)
Chico (raising his hands in surrender)
And the injustices we have all endured
Who is next?
Me?
My children?
My nephews?
Today I cannot act as if I am one of You,
And that the world is not on fire
I am not one of You
I am one of “them”
Today I cannot pretend that I have never been
Detained
Accosted
Mistaken for someone else
Belittled
Overlooked
Bypassed
Segregated against
Denied access
Required to sh
ow extra ID
Watched the light go out in someone’s eyes when they discover that I am Black
Aware of the rank odor of fear exuding from my pores
Felt the constant need to look over my shoulder
Assess my surroundings
Living in a world where I am more terrified of dying while doing ordinary things
Than I am of dying of this deadly plague
Worried and constantly checking my posture, my tone, my expression so that I do not
Seem too large, too dark, or too threatening
Even though I am righteously angry and grieve for people who thought there was still an inherent promise of tomorrow, or some other (fucking) fairy tale
Today I cannot
Paint in bright colors while the world is locked into struggles of
Black and Brown and Racism
Blue and Red
Nor write the tortured verses of Haiku,
Without mentioning the black and blue hues of my pain
Or act like the world makes sense and appear to be well-behaved
In a world that looks at me
and sees something distinctly “other” and/or “less than”
Something in desperate need of annihilation
Maybe tomorrow I can come out to play with You
Hiding behind the fraudulently color-blind screen
But today
I cannot bear it
What Sadness We Carry in Ordinary Times
What sadness we carry in ordinary times
Deep within our breasts
Our hearts threatening to burst
What sadness we carry in ordinary times
Told to breathe
It will make everything better or, at least, make it more tolerable
And gaining no relief
When we say we cannot
Breathe inside this thick and foul fog of hatred
What sadness we carry in ordinary times
When we hold vigils to honor our dead
Being held in check by people dressed in riot gear
With tear gas bombs, flash-bang grenades, pepper spray, and bullets
Real bullets
While we hold poster board and cardboard signs
as our only shields against mutilation and death
What sadness we carry in ordinary times
Beaten with state-sanctioned clubs
Electrified and stunned into submission with taser guns
Punched with clenched and outraged fists
seeking a target to shatter
Lit up with rubber bullets
Because we are not happy
And we are outside our own homes when the sun retreats
What sadness we carry in ordinary times
When the hot wax of candles drip onto our hands
Reminding us that we are
Still
Alive
Regrettably
What sadness we carry in ordinary times
Releasing balloons to honor the fallen
Attempting to release our pain into the firmament
Only to find them trampled in the streets a few blocks away or lost at sea
And we still carry the pain
What sadness we carry in ordinary times
When we reach out to the cosmos thinking we too are one with it
Discovering that we are instead
an unfortunate parody of mixed but not blended peoples
Vilified by all
Trying to raise a thin wheal of hope for our children
What sadness we carry in ordinary times
Because
No matter how gruesome the travesties
How egregious the atrocities
How ludicrous the explanations
How high the body count
And
even though we STILL, STILL, STILL cannot breathe
These are,
after all,
for us,
only ordinary times.
Acknowledgments
To my daughter and my best friend, Amanda, who listens to my stories and poems with great patience, gives honest feedback, but more importantly, lends unwavering support to my projects. To her daughter, who reads with me, introducing me to new writers, and makes the best faces when she does not like something.
To my father, who taught me about love in the short time we were together.
To Mary Anne Radmacher, for her encouragement, resourcefulness, friendship, and holding my feet to the fire.
To Sweetie Berry (and her family) for being friend and strategist.
To my writing group, Údar Anam Cara, for sharing their work while supporting mine.
To everyone on the Sourcebooks team: Dominique Raccah, book publisher, for taking a chance on a first-time writer; Meg Gibbons, my editor, for making the process simple; Todd Stocke, editorial director, for his editorial comments and suggestions; and everyone else involved with birthing this first book, even though I do not know your names…yet.
To my extended family, friends, and coworkers who have supported me knowingly and unintentionally.
About the Author
Martina McGowan, MD, is about effective engagements in life. A physician (gynecology) who has spent a lifetime engaging formidable opponents, she has been a victim of and an advocate against social, racial, and sexual injustices, a participant in school desegregation and integration, and a physician serving women who have been victims as well as heroines in the war on women. Effectiveness means pushing through glass ceilings and perceived limitations of others. Whether conversation is about social and racial injustice, personal development, spiritual enlightenment, or her grandchildren’s favorite books, she’s about becoming involved wherever she finds herself. A writer, a potter, an artist, a leader at work and within her community, Martina believes in the example of decide, learn, do, improve as you go. She enjoys traveling, reading, and speaking, as well as copious amounts of laughter with family and friends. She feels that the most valuable skill in life is learning to listen.
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