How We’re Seen.
As we consider where we as a people have been
and where we have yet to go
I think it is a fair assessment to say
that we are in a period of mourning.
Suffice it to say that we’ve never stopped mourning.
In a constant pinwheel of highs and lows,
don’t they call that a disorder?
I understand we win some and lose some
but what do we call it when the losses seem to be unbearable
and just too much?
I think about how “as it is above so it is below.”
Is that the same as the macro to the micro?
The communal to the individual.
I mean, if I’m exhibiting symptoms of bipolar,
is it safe to say that I am the black community?
A microcosm?
It’s me you get when you look at civil rights under a microscope.
Just broken plans and shattered hopes.
Not knowing down which road to go.
Stuck in a cycle.
Thinking every knee jerk reaction is a decisive one
but steady slipping off the ever swinging pendulum.
Folk keep asking me
how do we avoid the states new rules?
How can we fight back without the backlash?
Same time I’m analyzing unconstitutional
rules mandated by the government,
my therapist tests my limits.
She asked me one day
do I truly want to go to law school,
or is this yet another shiny bow to put on an empty box?
Am I,
yet again,
fishing to prove my thoughts
are good enough?
That the human I am is good enough,
and I belong somewhere?
Another proclamation,
building awareness,
making a point that we are unarmed and harmless
so no
we don’t deserve the bullet,
we don’t deserve the baton
and we don’t deserve the third degree,
we can prove they’re wrong.
Am I just a broken beat,
a tired old played Melody?
If I am my ancestors wildest dreams
why do I stay frozen in tormented scenes
when I sleep?
Open up my eyelids after eight hours
and exhaustion spews from my pores in showers.
I can’t be the hopes and the prayers of my elders,
looking in the mirror I see every flaw,
I can practice and plan and write
until my fingers are callused.
Maybe I just don’t get it.
They say the journey is the destination,
but if mine is filled with pain, rape, failures, molestation,
what exactly is the point of this freedom I am chasing?
Everywhere I turn,
seems just taking and violation,
nobody looking out for me but me,
at least that’s what I feel I’m facing.
Sometimes I am a little bitter of the options
I’ve been faced with.
Seems some people got a softer life,
it’s just the deck they playin
Cuz I’m quick to assume that life’s good over there
Isn’t that what we did?
Just figured racism could be rid
if we mixed up where we live
how we live and with whom we did
what we did?
Only to be faced with a new breed
now I’m not too naive,
I know we’re not the cause of all our problems,
yet we’re the ones left in the room to solve them,
the therapist tells me she expects I’ll eventually stop showing
that she can see the direction this is going
I wonder
is that us?
I mean I hardly identify as a Dem
but with this being a closed primary state and all,
I chose to choose a side
but it would be asinine,
and I’d be lyin,
if I said I believe in the vision
most times they not even in the same dimension
as the folks they use as talking points,
statistics and to make a point
but dont take the time to uplift
beyond a meaningless symbolic gift
if you catch my drift
I mean they’re yet another a grift
but we black folk go through phases when we get woke
for us its not as simple as our white comrades
see
cuz we have to contend with the fact that no matter what
we’ll still be seen how we’re seen