How
to speak of it—this shoeless nightmare, that tends to get better—but lost of
culture, and lost of love, to huddle on a corner! Oh the sadness—to pressure
our women, to denigrate their strengths—to make for slaves, a colony of
prostitutes, or to demean monogamy—a world of mad songs, to push black folks,
to arouse the white conscience; but never with violence, as opposed to
violence, to encounter violence; and ever with violence, to never
accomplish—the goal of violence. It’s everything black, to read it closely, to
oppress—against oppression. We die our culture, to emote the frustration,
enlove with the frustration. Oh let us speak—of mothers and fathers, as absent
as, It’s not there. Our worlds are
dissimilar: an apple as an orange, a grape as a strawberry, and ethnic
perceived as bad. I can’t fathom little Jane calling her mother a [b]itch;
while little Jane’s mouth is lacking tears; and I can’t fathom the ghost
holding on, while the body is already dead. I swallow spit and choke up blood
staring at shoe polish, as yellow as a Mazda. What for this watching: the world
as hostile, the sex as but a moment, the mind inverted, as combined culturally,
where authenticity is considered violence; for it must be me, for me to accept
such lives, for me to settle into a sense of comfort, the precedent being
myself; and oh the passion, clouded by eeriness, to own the black of the bus;
but times have changed, where such is subtle, unless for fully ignorant—and
fully distorted. I give us this ring—the land of Cush, that inner light for
acceptance: to see as lights, the birth of intimacy, this need for our
approval; else for incomplete, and living as strangers, as close as a nose
hair.
