Ascending Freedom

For:  My son, my sons, my nephews, for our sons

I held his hand in mine
Pulled him close as he shook like spring leaf
Quivering on bare branch in brisk breeze
I hugged him

Made him stare through bars
Like wrought iron windows
Told him not to look away
Look into its eye

We already dwell in the mouth of a lion

He didn't shake because of fear
The roar resonated through him
As if the letters were
Trying to reach past prison walls
Like winter whispers
That knew the only truth that mattered

Call it cage call it prison
How do you tell a 5 year old
The Lion is free and your world is a zoo
Jailin when you are older
I will read you Nelson Mandela quotes

Remind myself that he said

"There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountain top"

I will tell my nephew about Monica McBride
A mother should never bury their child
No matter how high we climb we will always be black
And the world hasn't outgrown its fear of the dark...
This is a world of children

I will ask him...

What use do I have for a mountain?
When fear turns fingers into fire fountains
And children fall like coins
Like tears, like prayers...
That drown in oceans of regret

Absent apology

Wishes may as well be whispers
No one hears them anyway
What good is a mountain of freedom?
When we already stand on the precipice of prejudice
And all the colors have been etched in stone
Skin and bone till the valley feels like home

Children swing-- from dreams they will never have
Because the mountain tops
Have been swept from beneath their feet
Mothers womb's become tombs--
So remind your mother
Caskets are no place to lay her love...

In this valley playgrounds are alleys
Trees are really Daddies
Easily cut down
Here childhood turns glass house
Sometimes poems become stones
Because we don't consider the weight of our words

Hill tops glisten full of broken memories
Ancestral maps marked with bloody fingers
That show us the way to glory
Like glittering grave markers
Of those we've lost along the way

Grandmother, patriarch, Queen...
Before I could ask how she climbed over such loss
She too was gone
Tell me how you overcome
The kind of strength that over comes you
When friends and loved ones become lost ones

I still can't understand

How you hide graveyards in your chest
When you cannot let caskets rest
Cause you couldn't leave them to the grasp of death
While we worship the worthless
And mothers are forced to barter breath
To help them breathe

Tell me how do we climb to freedom
When we still walk on our knees?

Only nobility knows the weight of sorrow
Old lion ... half whisper-- roar
Set straight in world gone wrong
Shoulders slumped, slacked jawed, jilted eye
Wind roused mane
Worn like a robe of struggle

Jailin ... there is no tiredness that can silence you
No fear when you live in the mouth of the beast
Your mothers tears were not meant to nail caskets closed
Teach your children where to find the pride lands
You remind me what it is to roar

It is from struggle that we gain our strength
Be powerful
Do not diminish in the face of adversity
Bent backs are only meant for attacking
Do not let this world break you

I still need a mountain top
So that I can show you the way
Please show me the way
Let me be the light in that valley
Ancestor that shimmers
Greatness that you reach for

One day...
Read my poetry ... Listen for my roar
Hope that it resonates in your son or nephew or stranger
Like words of Mandela, madiba, president, prisoner
Ancestor, light ... shimmering from the mountain top

for:  Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

(c) 2013 Christopher "UNtitled" Jones.  All rights reserved