At the Edge of Being Black

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#70 At the Edge of Being Black

Jagged concrete walls
Embellished with black toes
Gripping for dear life,
Snow-white fingertips bleed from sharp points,
That are engraved with words of death,
Every breath is filled with poison,
Not being treated as the chosen.
Royalty dangles right above success,
But being blinded by the soul for sell booth,
Sitting at the top of the wall,
Where the line is a mile long, and midnight,
And you can see brothers and sisters fight
Just for a place in a line that goes nowhere.
It's taken me years to be able to see over this wall,
Praying for the day that my will carries me over,
And that my brother won't pull me under
To get ahead of me,
Defeat me,
Stabbing me, trying to kill me,
To get in the end of the line
Filled with mocha-hontis faces,
Chiseled chests,
Buttermilk breasts,
And empty eyes that hide shame,
Guilt and pain
Cause they can still see the eyes and faces of us
That they climbed over to get to the un-promised land,
Where the milk and honey flows,
But is too low for us to drink
But we bend over anyway
Scratching past black feet
And getting surprised at the end result
Finding it hard to walk after being phucked
Now doubled over in pain
Staring right back into the eyes of the trampled and dismantled
They climb back down the concrete wall
Cutting their arms and legs
To use their knowledge
Teaching
Pushing the rest of us over the hard parts,
So we can help reclaim our rightful spot.
A place for us to value our worth,
But close enough to the concrete wall,
To prevent more black folks from the fall
And we don't have to go back to Africa,
Climb back aboard ships,
Take trips,
Switch hips,
Go blind staring at total eclipses
Of suns and moons,
Getting swept up in typhoons
Of seeding misleading
And interplanetary breeding,
With the enemy
Watching our people slowly bleeding
We need to rise from self,
Before we don't have anything left,
Maybe soon we can peer over the edge
And find our blackness…not lost, but
Characterized.

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We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.
-- Carter Woodson on founding Negro History Week, 1926

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