Tag: truth
You Are the One
“The picture of the dry bones in the Valley, is talking about you. You are Lazarus. You are the dry bones. You are the prodigal son. You are the lost sheep. You are the people about whom the bible is speaking. Who will stand up in the last days when the trumpet is sounded. Black people are waking up. Black people are standing up. Black people are rising up.” – Malcolm X
Memories
Nostalgia’s a nauseating
sickness
like four little girls
still trying to tear down the brick
painted on the sides
of their heads
Pocketbook scriptures still dangling
from underneath
their tongues
like a scorched covenant
under burned fingernails
still trying to get me to
remember
Truth be queasy
like first trimesters
be painful
like birth pains
I heard
a roll of thunder
and laughter more frightening
than decomposed bodies
at the bottom of bi-racial rivers
whispering
like the voice of Emmet
till when?
It asked me.
Before strings of voices erupted from some place
beyond the banks of the James River
from someplace before William Lynch’s arrival
somewhere marchin
stomping on my roots
somewhere printed on the back
of the forbidden fruit, I still
got between my teeth
a string of voices
sprung up
from the oppression
marching down the streets of Birmingham,
Chicago, Georgia, Mississippi, Harlem.
Willie Edwards,
James Chaney,
Michael Donald,
Michael Griffith,
Michael Brown,
Yusef Hawkins,
James Byrd Jr, and Trayvon Martin’s voices
sang hymns of “I told you so’s”
for my memories
like women giving birth
to still born children
Till when?
said Mr. Till.
Will you people continue to give birth
to death
still lying on the bed
of Martin’s dreams?
They sang with an authority
like rolling thunder
and butterflies in my stomach
like truth on top Moses mountain they sang
like earthquakes
cracking my memories into lynched question marks
they sang
like blood-thirsty whales behind slave ships
like ripping flesh
torn open
with Hebrew scriptures
in their veins
they sang
like diseases written into the sky
and prison chains
their voices roared
like a million I told you so’s they sang
like voices do
and they asked me a question
but their words
were few
Till when?
Screamed the segregated
Set-apart
and unequal lungs
of Emmett
Till when?
He sang.
Like the lyrics of Deuteronomy
carried up
Till when will Malcolm,
Booker T.
and Martin King
still dream
before
they wake up?
You Are Not for Everyone
The more I value myself the more I realize a daunting truth: Not everyone deserves to know me. In the words of Rudy Francisco: “Some people will take until you have nothing left, and then hold a grudge against your hands for being empty.”
Beyond Imagination
We live in a world where some aspects of truth are not allowed to exist. They live instead behind the pages of books and underneath the skin of imagination. Writing fiction is fun to me because we have the opportunity to play with these elements, mixing and matching reality and daydreams until anything becomes possible within reach of imagination.
Monsters pop in from outer space, people fly, and houses speak to us. But the truth is stranger than fiction and stretches beyond imagination. Nothing we can make up compares to the unusual reality of the kinds of things that actually take place in the real world. You think you’re watching a movie written by a writer who stuttered embellishments in the darkness of his bedroom, fingers tapping against the keyboard while memory plays hide and seek with his thoughts.
But what if his characters really do exist? What if armies of giants live underground with thousand eye locusts like horses ready for battle?
You think Shrek was the genius of a profound imagination until you realize there were talking Donkeys in the history of man. You think The Matrix is just a movie until you begin to understand a parallel universe.
“Truth is Stranger Than Fiction” isn’t just a fancy tagline put together by a writer of fiction. Not something I dug up between the inspirations of Mark Twain. What it seeks to communicate is the notion that nothing we can create can be as unusual as what we are bound to find in real life and speaks metaphorically of the unsettling realness of truth. The “strangeness” of reality. You think something is weird until you find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Perhaps maybe your characters are not just stick men, but what if they actually do exist?
These Good People
I will tell you of these good people
A scroll of courtesy on their tongues
Neatly wrapped in rainbows
And angel’s wings
The finest hello
And thank you
And good morning, please
We are telecommunicators
In front of computer screens
With scripts
And sayings
And clichés
That ring sunshine
Like a glass of sweet summer breeze
Trapped in cold winter bottles
Set free
But hurricanes do happen
And thunderstorms will sometimes fall into your lap
You may one day trip over someone’s mistake
Find typos in their smile
Cracks in their armor
Leaks in their wine-skins
And I promise you that these people
Will backspace their lines
Tighten up their scripts
2nd draft their good mornings
Because the sun didn’t shine on you today
One mistake
One mishap
One earthquake
And I promise you
That they will pick out their courtesy from your face
Peel back the savior
Their “how are you?” left in your smile
Pull back the Hero once carved into their chest
That moment they cared more about you
Than they cared about self
But one mistake
And they’ll drop their cape
At the foot of your tragedy
I promise you
That the levees of trust
Will break
And Crack
And leak with suspicion
From the pores of their skins
You’ll smell the stench
Of give up
On their breaths
The sour taste of newborn behind their ears
The fabricated persona
Tattooed on top their tongues
I warn you
Whilst bathing in the wake of your passion
Whilst being kissed by white paper
Do not forget
That these people are not your friends
And will turn their backs
When you need them most
Because in the age of technology
Most people’s thoughts are not theirs
And their courtesies are pre-written
Hearts plagiarized
A routine kindness
From so called good people
Who forgot to mention that angels
Are not always good
So paper wings will just have to do
A standard hello
Like the signature on an email
And they have convinced themselves
That this
Is
Love
Why I Speak
“We often forget that the current state of Black Americans is directly related to history.”
It is clear that we live in a system that is unfair and a civilization that is not just. I speak of these things not because I want to focus on the negative experience of blacks in America only. I speak of these things not because I’m a dark person who just wanna keep bringing up bad stuff. I speak of these things because we’ve become comfortable here in this land. We have been blinded from the truth as a people. We’ve forgotten that the constitution did not include us and that civilization for us is outside of this system. We’ve been tricked into believing that we are citizens in this land and that we have some kind of rights here. We’ve forgotten that when “All men were created equal” that didn’t include us. For what to the slave is the 4th of July?
You see we’ve forgotten where we’ve come from and as a result have no idea where we’re going. How can a slave pursue freedom when he thinks that he is already free? You see the black man does not exist. Black is a color, not a nation of people. Where is African American land? It does not exist. Africa and America are the combinings of two continents. There are over 50 countries in Africa, how then can “African” properly define a people? Which country in Africa are we talking about? African American is also therefore not a nation of people.
I speak because our roots stretch deeper than colors, bywords, proverbs, and mockeries that conceal true identities. I speak because we forget that we were never part of this constitution. To amend. It means to alter, modify, and to revise. This document had to be revised, altered, and modified just to include you. No justice no peace, my people. It means that there’s no justice for you here and there’s no peace here either. This is the world we live in. We condemn the Confederate flag and we praise the American flag because we’ve been blinded to think there’s a difference between the two. They both drip with the blood of the saints.
We continue to march and to protest because we believe it will change things. How is it that we’ve gone from fighting for freedom to settling for Civil Rights? What is a civil right? What about human rights? So yes, I speak. I speak because we think we know slavery and we know nothing. I speak because we think we know freedom and we know nothing. I speak because we think we have rights and we have nothing. I speak because we think we know justice in a land that is anything but just. Don’t matter who becomes president. It is the system that is broken and it is my responsibility to speak.
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