Waxing poetic on thoughts, theory & the times
“It’s a man’s world,”
they say,
But someone still
Needs to teach
The little ones,
Gender irrelevant,
How to do,
To survive,
To get by,
When a “man” is gone,
Not present,
Never present,
Or passed on;
What of little girls never taught
To change a tire;
Or mow the lawn?
We teach her
To understand dependence,
Believe it,
Then rip off the illusion
With age;
Man, woman
Mortality is the great equalizer,
Teach the little ones, all:
How.
I am running,
But I’m losing breath,
No time to check the time,
Time is always running
Parallel to my destination,
I’m always late at the station,
I pump harder
Fear I might die,
Sprout wings,
And see me, watch me
fly.
I’ve never been up here;
Up high,
Never seen the masses from such a distance,
To see they gather
Following my vision,
As we all see the dream,
Through different eyes
The gaze,
Beautiful the colors as they shift,
Align, and fluidly create,
Our dreams put to fruition,
Are gaining speed,
As they turn into items, feats,
That were once loose imaginings,
This is our kaleidoscope
Of a wise black spirit,
That lovingly absorbs all the colors
With so much on my mind
With so much on the world
It’s no wonder I cannot sleep,
I toss and turn,
With no specific thought,
Just a sense of worry,
For the times,
For the unsettled,
For the pained,
My ministerial heart,
Aches,
For past and present pains,
For systemic wrongs,
I long to change,
I am called to move,
Even in the night,
When tired eyes should close,
Should rest,
I am called to move,
Mobilized by my heart,
Pumping blood of my ancestors through my veins,
In and through brown limbs,
I am moved for change,
To actualize the humanity
I have seen in small doses,
On a grander scale,
To see my brothers and sisters with air filled lungs,
Chanting their message of change into being,
We move,
Not just legs,
But ideas,
Beliefs,
Of an equalized existence
Not pierced by the hate and apathy we have seen,
We move,
We move,
We move.
Naming values
Is easier said
Than done,
Defining what motivates,
What drives,
What guides,
Is like catching the breath you breathe,
But, it can be done,
It can be done,
To claim a fraction of one’s identity,
What guides me?
Love;
Belief in good;
In the innate neutrality of all nature;
In the naivete of mind, driven by self-preservation, for survival;
In a unity, interconnectedness of all beings,
-Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually;
In the reality that there is more than we can ever know;
That minds and knowledge are a gift;
In ultimate truth, unencumbered by belief;
In the beauty and necessary of diversity- cosmic creativity;
In the innate equal worth of all humans;
In the equal value of all creatures;
In the need for salvation as a daily occurrence, not for the end of times, or judgement;
In the reality of karmic balance;
In a spiritual realm, that we may never understand, though we might catch glimpses;
In evolution as a part of Divine creation;
This list is a theological reflection of mind,
Capturing pieces of my soul in diction,
But it is endlessly incomplete,
As I grow,
Moment to moment,
Understanding more,
But these remain with me,
The realized and unrealized,
Guiding in step,
Guiding in deed,
Guiding me.
Wake up to the realization
That things are often
Not as they seem,
White picket fences
Are redlined
With a much darker history
Dark like burnt cork
Dark like the black night of masked midnight rides,
But also dark, with stars guiding
Like an underground railroad run,
Our history is our history,
We cannot cherry pick the plot,
But we can from our ends figure out how to continue the story
America was always a complex experiment,
A wild unruly flower
Largely grown from blood and tears,
And blood and tears still water her today,
It is how they are shed that
Makes the difference
Mapping a family tree
Going back centuries
Becomes a test of how much truth
One wishes to open up,
It’s a Pandora’s box of past
That leaves us staring face to face at times
With the sins of the mother and father,
Wondering how amends can be made for past wrong,
When guilt is a well that keeps dredging deeper
But our past is our past
And sometimes the good is not,
Even cannot be recorded,
And our past is still ours to handle,
We are living knee deep in it,
still collecting and paying for the past our own eyes may have never seen,
It was not our place to be there,
But rather to be here,
Being actors, witness to the present,
And reflectors on the past
Watchmen for our now,
To ensure better choices,
The best choices may be made to impact the future,
It is all connected,
And it is our responsibility,
As Americans, as world citizens, as humans,
As sentient beings to ensure we are guided wisely,
By not guilt, or raw anger,
But by complex thought
On what to do with the lessons and emotions evoked from the American past,
in this present,
It is all of our past,
It always has been,
Though history has affected all unequally,
It is our past to take on,
Our past as a present to grapple with,
In order to become closer together as a single entity,
As siblings,
Who can handle reality,
Who can allocate responsibility,
Who can be the e pluribus unum aspired to,
We are a people of all Nations,
It is remembering that which is the challenge,
And truly realizing that
This is
all of our America
10/30/2018
You are here,
As I am here,
As we are here,
As they are here,
As all are here,
And should never be clothed
in shame,
Or repremanded
For your truth,
You truth is not their same,
Your truth IS
your truth,
And though they may try,
They can never expunge
your spirit,
Your story,
Your truth,
your chosen name.
She of Letters 