Tag: meaning

Do You Know Your Somebodiness?

Crazy to think that in just a few short hours, this day will be part of history. As I write this, I think about how easily today becomes a memory. The question is, will it be a day worth remembering? Will I remember a cold day with clear skies and the birds building their nests in the tree outside my bedroom window?

As I sit here wearing my I am Black History sweatshirt and my blackballed fists earrings, I am forced to ask myself what it means. What does it mean to be the embodiment of black history? 

When I think about it, I think about legacy. Those things we leave behind for others to grab onto. We live in a world where a person’s significance is realized the most after death. Something about the absence of their presence forces us to consider the nobility of the lives they lived and what we take from it.

Toni Morrison once said, “the function of freedom is to free someone else.” I think about the responsibility of that, and I resolve that being black history in the flesh means to live my life in such a way that black people feel free. 

Still, I am constantly contemplating what that means in all its fullness. How does a person feel free? What parameters must exist for an individual to feel uncaged? These are not simple questions to answer, yet I think we answer them daily with our actions. I think we answer them with the lives we live.

Alice Walker said “the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” I supposed this is why Dr. King talked about holding on to your somebodiness, because your somebodiness is your power. Your sense of identity and belonging. Your truth. 

Do you know your somebodiness? Do you know your mother’s name and her mother’s name? Do you know your people? Do you know from what root you sprang? How much time do you spend investigating how to reclaim your own identity? You say you are black history. You wear the shirts, use the hashtags and pump your black fists into the air, but do you know your name? Do you know what was taken from you? Do you know what was not?

Do you know your own somebodiness? 

If My Books Shall Die

jez-timms-unsplash

I read James Baldwin today

and realized I was carrying his bones

in the crooks of my arms,

and that if my books shall die,

then I have labored in vain.

 

I have swam through centuries

and ran years in someone else’s shoes,

I have climbed mountains

and crawled under valleys

only to bleed death.

I have wasted my time

carving obsession into paper

with invisible ink,

Words fallen like stars

on deaf ears.

 

If my books shall die,

then let me not be born.

Take me back to the safety

of my mother’s womb,

the privacy

of not yet existing

if my works have been in vain.

 

If my books shall die,

then I do not exist.

Not on the tops of your shelves,

or faced down on kitchen counters,

or underneath your children’s beds.

Honor me

in the palms of your hands

and not standing next to Grandmother’s old picture in the living room—

Grandmother is dead

and I do not wish to die.

 

Give me my flowers today

and accept the life I offer you

in the form of metaphors

On silver platters,

For I am feeding you

with silver spoons

and all you’ve got to do is eat…

I offer you

the best of me.

 

And when I am dead,

no longer among the living

crack open a book written by me

and feel my breath on your skin.

Hear my voice resurrect

from inside an ancient pen,

Watch my tongue dance,

See my lips move

and witness passion soar from beyond the grave.

 

If my books shall die

then my words did not really contain life,

But if my books shall live…

What are you waiting for?

Go to your bookshelf,

Resurrect me

and carry

my bones.

Friends

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Echoes off the tops of our lungs with undeniable ease. Friends. Like random hellos, or a courtesy goodbye. Like a sporadic gesture among the land of foreigners, friends too has become a strange language; its value in a strange land as it falls off the edges of our tongues. Words have no meaning for many of us. They race from underneath the spaces of our hearts to descend empty into the air. To land idly among the elements, or on the tops of buildings and of trees. After all, “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” We chant this saying from infancy to adulthood, carrying perception on our shoulders like truth. Meanwhile, words will go on to hurt and heal, afflict and inspire. Friends. Technology says we can find them on Facebook. Fly away with them on Twitter and update relationships instantly. Though I’ve never known a friendship to be built so fast. What kind of lessons do we learn in a world that laughs at murder because words after all have no meaning, so “I hate you” doesn’t mean that I might as well have killed you. Friends. There is no greater person than one who is willing to lay down his life for his friend and yet, the word leaps as it wills off the edges of our tongues. Such a light hearted fantasy. Everyone is a friend today, though not everyone is willing to die for you. Friends. So often do we fill it with air and toss it around among our peers; an enslaved basketball among the bars of netted string is this word. Nothing more than a one syllable title we release into the air to become captive to whatever it wills. But what does it truly mean to be a friend?