Black

Black
I was taught to be afraid of the dark
I mean that deep midnight of spooks
A people bereft of their soil
and shackled to anothers plow
sustaining themselves on the
discards of someone else's supposed munificence

Black
I learned to be ashamed in the dark
what kind of people would allow themselves to be enslaved
bound, gagged and carted off against their will
to an unknown land?
I skulked as the shadow of my class, unanswered.

Black
Crime infested neighborhoods, drug overlords, poverty stricken ghettos,
HIV/AIDS Ravaged, Down-low manipulators, violent gangs,
misogynistic populism, rampant health disparities,
widening educational gaps, skyrocketing unemployment.
When that loud group of boys got on train how I have recoiled in judgement
The distance I tried to place between myself and that shadow
earned me a lifetime of imprisonment, stuck in my own foul reflection

Black
But now as I look, I see an primal energy, raw and irrepressible, a sacred strength
passed on through decades of hardship, in song, food, and fellowship
and the ability to endure the most nightmarish tempests
such will erase and transmute the jim crows and apartheids
because nothing less than love and truth are the alchemical agents
working to free us all at last

Black
I used to be afraid of the dark
but now I embrace it in wholeness.
When you sit alone in the true depths of darkness
you begin to be breathed by it and you realize
that chasing the light can be a distraction.
I celebrate the mystery of darkness
I surrender myself to the unknown
to discover in each shadowy moment
the inherent beauty of the night