Ode to the North Side

Better signage...

Those boys don’t work; those boy can’t cope. Wearing their jeans down around their butt, a white man knows they will not make the cut. Those boys smoke dope; those boys make plans, but when the munchies come there is no hope; looking at refrigerators empty, cabinets naked, a life of crime might work, they just take it. These boys shoot; at houses, at cars and at people; a 3-year-old was buried in the steeple.  Those boys don’t have a father; those boys don’t have zilch. Those boys are lost, forgotten and nothing. God, the city, county and state cannot save those boys. SMH, Those boys. Keep hope alive? Those boys were the hope that died.

Tautology: Happy

Dedicated to my wife and sons.

The boys; my boys.

You find me happy; a condition that lives with me, happy to be alive, happy to breath, happy to have two boys (sons), who are happy and a wife that calls me her “honey-doo.” Life is good when it’s happy; happy is good when it’s a part of your life.

Listening carefully, I hear the voice of my mother; the voices of my father; the voice of my uncles; the voice of people I do not know who need something I do not have, but voices calling that make it apparent I can get what the voices need. Listening, I hear the voices of the mothers and their children on the bus stops on a hot summer day or a cold winter night asking why me; what did I do wrong in my timeline to not be in a cool car or have my own warm ride? The babies call, sad, crying, hungry, some dying with the flying bullets from people who will not listen to the graves of last years past.

Life makes me presents; a present that is not a gift, a present in the here and now; the today and tomorrow, this year and next year – not promised, but hoped for. Working hard everyday to make sure my to boys see the way is worth the pain, worth the trouble, because when I look into their eyes, its Daddy’s body double.

MAP

I look at a map of the universe I see a galaxy filled with stars and burning bright balls of fire moving at speeds that cannot be measured; Congregations of rocks, ice cold frozen together unable to break away from in the fringed interior of intergalactic mayhem. A tail; a tail of rocks shooting across my stern, scorching the whiskers on my beard; the sound of nothingness looking at time move slanted, rearward, onward and motionless. I am only an onlooker traveling in a time vortex protected by wormholes that dance with new openings and celebrate the mysterious deliveries and intentions for new and great possibilities.  I was here when he created that special place, moving, shifting, molding and mining a place for air, water and life. I was here when he said, “it is good.” My ship rested beside him when he slumbered on his final creation.

MAP

…i come from…

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I come from Elizabeth and Donald. I come from 1961; I come from not having a worry in the world; I come from fun memories. I come from…a community that is torn inside and out like smoking crack with an aluminum foil pipe, you never make it back to that first high. I come from pill popping, weed smoking, Colt 45 and the Miller High Life. I come from “no you can’t” and “no you will never be.” I come from Nigger, slave, coon and buffer. I come from a community where I am considered a political assassin because I don’t believe in the qualities of a liberal conversation about hope and change when ALL I see is blight and rage.  I come from marginalization and disregard; I come from the cannon of things to come. I come from death and the reinvention; I come from complicated apprehensions.

I come from contempt prior to investigation with an education. I come from Black Power, for just an hour because nobody wants to hear that anymore. I come from soul brother, cool cat, house Negro and Uncle Tom. I come from green; guns; airplanes and parachutes. I come from get down and give me 50; I come from red clay, white t-shirts, heavy black boots.  I come from the highest form of discipline: …i come from.

Did you know him?

"Me."

Did you know him? “Dear, dearer, dearest, debatable, debilitating, debonair, decent, deceptive, decisional, decisive, declarative, decorative, decorous, deep, deeper, deepest, defensive, defiant, definable, definite, deliberate, delicate, delicious, delighted, delightful, delinquent, delirious, deluxe, demanding, democratic, dense, departmental, dependable, deplorable, deserving, desirable, deviant, devilish, devoted, and dexterous.”

Did you know him? “Outgoing, outlandish, outlying, outmoded, outraged, outrageous, outright, outside, outsized, outspoken, outstanding, outstate, outward, outworn, overaggressive, overbearing, overblown, overcerebral, overconfident, overcurious, overdue, overeager, overgenerous, overhand, overhead, overjoyed, overloud, overnight, overprotective, overrated, oversize, oversized, overt, overwhelming, and overwrought.”

Did you know him? “Naive, naked, nameless, nappy, narrative, nationalist, nationalistic, natural, naughty, nauseating, near, neat, necessary, negroid, neighborly, nerveless, nervous, neural, next, nice, nifty, noble, noisy, nominal,  nonpartisan, nonviolent, nonwhite, normal, normative, nostalgic, nosy, notable, noteworthy, noticeable, notorious, and novel.

Did you know him? Did you know…d…o…n?

A Message to the Ancestors from the Angry Black Boy

"I see me." 

Someone carries a key; a key to the past - searching for a door; a door with a lock.  A door with a keyhole; a keyhole that unlocks the past and shows someone the future. Lifting the ancestors, my ancestors, I see a vague a tattered past; a past reminiscent of an egg, an egg that has dropped out of a robin’s nest; an egg broken by the force of the world. A place where a mother robin looks helplessly and cannot communicate to the world what might have been?

My anger is my hate, people make my anger, and my rage is carried back and forward into generations that do not see moving visions in their decision but chose a quick fix with a hot needle and some warm heroin. The pain comes in many forms from my mother who picked one-hundred pounds of cotton everyday of her young life and was beat if she was sick our did not go out in the rain. The Irish plantation owner who raped my great grandmother is also to blame for my anger. The blood of his blood; the blood of his sons; the blood of his bloodline; runs through my veins, red, raw and ruined for generations to come.

Being the Angry Black Boy is sometimes like being laid to rest:

Dead,

       Deep 

                Dark

                     Decaying.

My ancestors cursed me on both sides as a cruel joke to make sure I carried out the missions of Nat Turner in a modern day execution of all that is evil; all that is bad; all that my ancestors never had.