Poem

Questions as Tears

Wet with vision my feet fumble to stand

rising seems impossible.

Trails of tears retrace the miles

ancestors traveled to get there

here, so many clouds of truths

loose like wandering smoke signals

journey into the open sky,

journey down rivers that ripple into banks of falling water and collect.

I want to know,  what is the price for so many unnamed, renamed?

White man cashed it all in like puppet master,

Pinocchioed my people dependent

created strings invisible.

Traditions web entangled,

Grandmother spider visits me, sings sadly

songs of remembering.

Language come undone, unspun from traditions web

Where and when will freedom ring?

Will the cowrie speak to me again?

Telling a piece of herstory.

Will the feather teach me where it has been

so that I will know where I am going?

Mind rains heavy with questions as tears.

Worry, I moan to the universe

a well of yearning to know place.

I carve to make it known

unforgettable again, as once was

the ways you’ve stolen, white man.

Heaven to me is a reunion of BlackIndians,

I am at the table with ancestors

celebrating the homecoming, the harvesting,

the fruits of answered questions laid before us as offering

offered before us from the earth

for all our tears shed.

In hope of home, we made it so.

Digging for truth, not settling unless

resolution brings revolution

changing the game and demanding a wells worth of response.

Where did you hide us?

Anthropologists of our dreams

Archeologists of our remains

Farmers of our story.

Where did we hide ourselves?

To Hold

I see women kin with fingers, ringed

rocks of diamonds sparkle, twinkle,

in the crux of light.

Holding histories of wanting,

memories of wish,

centuries of gender normative ideas;

bright angles cut close to the bone.

I am mere marrow,

too soft, too tender, to hold

all of me.

The rocks try to break

my bones, put up a fight;

create a bolder blood.

I just cannot fit to finger

rings of rock steady diamonds;

instead fancy the fingering of flowers,

petal to petal to stem to milk.

My body is of this land,

spirit and earth, resists

lock rock steady no movement;

too fluid are my ebbing, flowing ways.

I come undone embedded beneath

the soul of our mother.

I am her, she is me,

We are held.

City Bus

This bus is foggy Mama

This bus is foggy Papa

Makes me want to draw my dreams on windows

Paint finger pictures of shapes and other things.

Hey, Mama!  He Papa!

I wonder if everybody else is thinking the same thing?

No?  Maybe they’re too distracted to see, or be seen?

Oh, Mama!

Oh Papa!

We’re all exposed either way.

Might as well have fun

with these city bus windows,

stand beside one another and sketch our dreams.