The Grand Experiment
She was born into this room – 12 by 14 – this closet filled with only a broom, a toilet and a sink. She didn’t know what to think as she aged, but the room was all she ever knew – so she accepted it.
No windows to look through – just 4 walls, a ceiling and a floor – oh and then there was that door – which never opened – the opportunity to explore never given… and she never missed it.
Each time she awoke from sleep a meal would be waiting by that door. It smelled good, so by instinct she’d eat – never thinking to ask for more. Was it day or was it night? She had no concept of time. When it wasn’t dark – it was light – when the tungsten filament was set ablaze by electricity and the bulb came on. Even then she had nowhere to go in the small room with a ceiling and a floor. So she made up an imaginary friend out of the broom to explore the small expanse.
Woman in God’s Picture
My face is shadowed by tears and shame
When I see the way you are treated.
I stare at my brothers in disbelief
As they take unauthorized authority.
I am given a bad name because of them
And you suffer at the hands of them.
But how do I combat this negativity
That is birthed from wrong activity?
Why would I address you, my Black Woman
By some derogatory term that invokes disrespect and isolates?
Why would I tear down your essence
The life of your very presence
And treat you like some cheap object
Even if you wanted to be treated that way?
Do I not realize that you are someone’s daughter?
Someone’s sister – someone’s mother?
Do I not realize that you are someone’s cousin?
Someone’s aunt or someone’s niece?
Slavery
No one can see the bars and chains
Nor feel the weight of the surrounding enclosures
No one can sense the isolation that is present in me.
Is this what slavery is?
It’s existence “explained away” to some time long ago.
But is this what it feels like?
Some kind of inescapable generational curse?
I was not born into slavery in the traditional sense… but it haunts me.
I walk around seeming to be free… but am I really?
I seem to fit in nowhere on this planet called earth
Constantly fighting to prove my existence
To those who love, who hate, who despise me
But most of all to myself.
Is this what slavery is…
A disconnection from my true heritage?
An implementing of a false hope…
The lie that I am no good?
Endangered Species
Each day we die - One less black man standing on this earth. A surrounding of pain and sorrow, constant battles and struggles leave us fighting just long enough to survive. Each passing second brings closer the dark cloud that strips us of the vision to rise above the accomplishments of our ancestors. The cold rain hits us like stones as we become the prey of a silent predator, bent on our annihilation. It is a gruesome sight to see my brothers pulled into its jaws.
Once a great united people, now at odds with each other; soon to face ruin if things don’t change for the better. We are faced with a disease so large, that it misleads the majority of us with false hopes. We are pawns for the sinister as we kill and steal for what truly doesn’t matter like sneakers and gold chains and twenty five dollar watches… cars, sports utility vehicles and money made out of paper that burns like everything else. Our lives are filled with hate, lies and jealousy fueled by a consumer manipulated materialistic mentality.
What in the world is going on with MEN? I get this question periodically from both men and women, who are trying to gain understanding concerning the struggle that men face. Just recently, a leader of a men’s group asked what my thoughts were on this subject. What in the world is going on with MEN? I know women are struggling in life as well and I do not want to minimize this fact, however there is something going on with men, that doesn’t seem to be often talked about; and when it is, somehow the discussion doesn’t seem to last very long.