Sooo I love stories... And I have a few more for you, but I thought I had better explain to my followers a few "minor" things. First, I am dyslexic, as you might have noticed, spelling errors show up in all of my writings. I could proof read them MORE, but then you might never see them, and that would be a loss for both you and me. A poetry teacher once told me I needed to go back and take a basic English course, and that comment stopped my writings for months and wounded me something awful. For me that professor was not particularly helpful, I only resented him after that.
Don't listen to what other people say. People that need to write do so for their own sanity and enjoyment. The fact that I might help other people, or communicate a message is secondary to me. I need to write to figure myself out,,, and make sense of my world. The gist of all this is that I will ask you to overlook some of more obvious spelling errors and try to hear the "voice" of the poem. If poetry is about finding your voice, I have found mine, and I hope you can hear me even with the misspellings. I can always hope!
I am also a very wounded person, who as a child experienced physical emotional and sexual abuse as a very young child. I have struggled with depression most of my life. You may see this "darkness" in my writings at times and many people are offended and put off by it. it is a part of who I am and so it comes out in my work. It is probably the primary reason I have had trouble publishing my work, as I have been told by other writers that most publications like to leave the reader with a sense of well being. Hurt exists in this world....and sometimes in very primitive forms that hit a very visceral nerve. I see hurt because I hurt and I don;t want it any other way. I want people to feel when they read my poetry, and maybe we all need to voice our pain a bit more honestly in this society. So if my poetry makes you sad, or angry or melancholy, that is OK.. I want you to feel. I want you to feel and think about doing things in your life a bit differently, or looking at the stranger next door as a flawed human being. Anyway, enjoy more of the story variety.
Guilty
Already I forget his name,
child with the almond eyes and dark walnut skin,
whose face peered out from the nightly news.
An impish smile frozen on a magnetic screen,
For three days,
four nights
twelve broadcasts
every newspaper
they searched for that little boy.
Combed the junkyards,
questioned the neighbors,
brought out the dogs.
They flashed his name and face on screens across the state,
until the image of his wide - eyed grin haunted my dreams
like an unconscious retinic image.
At some point his brother told the cops to check the freezer
and there they found him
his severed limbs as delicate as fawns legs hidden in the ice.
Already I forget his name,
as if his four year old life
wasn't short enough
to end.
Severed limb from limb with a butchers knife
like one of the Innocents
killed by the sword in search of the Christ Child.
Already I forget his name...
as if his four year old life wasn't short enough to bring me shame.
Four tar - small footprints
stain the slate I walk each day...
and still I cannot know his name....
like a breath whispered
and gone,
his eyes still smiling from the TV screen.
Today I walk this sidewalk weeping
for a child as unseen as the ghost
who left these marks on the walk of my everyday life.
Spring 1994
The next poem is an actual revealing of my family's ancestral history, which surprisingly included the fact that my grandfather was listed as "mulatto" in the 1830 census. His mother was listed as "colored". It brought some light to some old family myths and stories that was part of my up bring.
Passing Over
All those years of sister's teasing
"Nigger lips, nigger nose"
and wondering why Nana bought me dresses and haircuts.
Told me at the age of eight
"Don't leave flowers on My doorstep"
Why all those years my cousins were accepted,
but my sisters, brother and myself,
were not.
We were not in a very real sense.
All these years of plaiting their hair
holding their hands
smelling their skin:
All those years of holding them in the rage of their fear
and maybe this family secret is why I came here a century ago. (*1)
All those years I wondered "not what?"
This winter I went to Florida to see my grandparents.
My great Uncle Ralph
asks me in a line at Universal Studios
"What tribe did your father belong to in the Caribbean...
EXACTLY?"
My Nana states at dinner
"You can always tell bi racial children by their noses"
and everyone falls silent as they stare at the center of my face.
"Not what?!"
"Not white??!"
"Not completely??!"!
Now the innocent joke my mother has told
isn't funny..
about how following my birth she told the nurse
"you've brought me the wrong baby!"
and pointed to the colored woman in the next bed.
"you were just sooo DARK... My mother laughs,
" ......A head full of long black hair"
I should have known then,
the taste of the color I had been born in..
All those years my father taught
in the small town school
was ridiculed,
shunned,
isolated,
scorned,
mocked,
never befriended despite his friendliness
until finally he took an early retirement at age fifty.
Maybe the same person who told his peers
was the same one who told my Nana
he would never sell his house to that black man and his wife.
My mother should have known then,
the taste of the color she married in.
the taste of the color she married in.
All those years I should have learned to hate something...
it was "what ?" exactly?
I didn't know..
It wasn't in my father's nature either
it wasn't in his skin
to hate these people that didn't know the taste of the color of the world they had been born in.
never lily white
always a shade of difference.
This year I got a taste of the color I've been bathing in,
sometimes nutmeg brown,
sometimes coffee with cream,
sometimes tar baby black,
but always...
"you've got you father's beautiful skin!"
gardenias are white
although if you look closely I'd say they look like ivory
,But white enough to be my nan's favorite.
That was my gift to her
a plant that will not die beside her doorstep
a plant whose tropical exotic scent
sweet,
heavy,
like the grease on my child's hair,
will forever betray the orgin of it's snow white blooms.
*1 I worked in a residential facility outside Philadelphia with abused children for almost 20 years.
