Mind of a Martyr: Shoe Polish

Welcome

Being unemployed gives you time to think. It is a rare opportunity to reflect on who you are, and who you plan to become. Financial difficulty is a life defining experience when faced with homelessness. I have a belief that everything happens for a reason. Having a chance to live outside of and observe a system we strive to be a part of, which will eventually destroy us gives life a new perspective. At times deep in thought I remind myself that the test of success is graded in your ability to face failure. As a young man aspiring to be a rapper I often wrote of my fear of failure, and my desire to succeed. It wasn't until age 30 on a windy October day that I embraced the idea; stagnation is like dying, all successes in life, love, and finance involve risk and accountability for your actions. The fear of failure is the same as the fear of success.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Shoe Polish

October 28, 2013

This is not shoe polish
I am NOT a shadow
Ghost of slavery, soot monster
Remnant of lynching... nigger picked
Swinging from a coon trap... no
I am not a porch monkey lawn jockey
Black face statue of something you think I can't accomplish
This is not shoe polish

I am the son of a teacher and a nurse
3rd generation college student, poet
Not thief, nor drug dealing murderer
I was a brown baby when my parents split
I remain whole unbroken
You cannot break me

I am Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson
I am Jesse Owens, but no matter how fleet of foot
I can't out run your stereotypes
I can't run out of my skin
I am the child of dignity and deprivation

Do not call me black
My skin is not soil rich, I am not dirt
Though you may try to walk all over me
Stomp me down run me through the mud
I am more than what you recognize as my skin tone
This is not shoe polish

You are not racist
You are privileged
You are ignorant
Unapologetic in your actions
When you take them
You are pity... you are not charity
You are the part of the solution
That perpetuates the problem

Some of you want to help
Most just play dress up
Be ghost klansman, vampire blood sucker
Black face new American nightmare
You think this is a game, some kind of joke
I was born in your Halloween costume

Racial equality is a trick treat me like a criminal
Prisons aren't always places with bars and barbed wire
When you've been thinking a way for so long
You don't even know you are trapped
Holding onto racism is a reflex
Clutch your purse, clutch your children
Clutch to the idea that your different is somehow better
Your prison is the awkward space you create in crowded elevators

You are family dinners, tea parties, and sandwiches with the crust cut off
We are broken glass, broken home, broken down car
Progress is all we've have, you keep putting the breaks on us
We can eat at your table but you leave nothing for the taking
And I wouldn't call you greedy...
You just don't know what an empty stomach feels like

We are hunger
Starved for equality, for peace, for pride, you fear our voices
We are not loud because we're aggressive
We are just trying to talk over rumbling stomachs
To drown out our embarrassment

This is not shoe polish
This is my skin
It tears, it bleeds... I die
I am a human being
This is not a joke, not a costume
And certainly not shoe polish

Pens aren't always mightier than swords -UNtitled