Somebody Bring Me The Head Of A Dinosaur T-shirt

musings about coping mechanisms and fatigue

i.

I don't want to talk about Sarah
or Michael or Emmett or
Freddie or Medgar
or Oscar
or Eric
     or tomorrow’s name to be rallied for
     or yesterday’s that is too heavy to carry
     into the list of names I can run off the top of my head
today

I want to talk about little girls with long legs
straight backs
moving sure and stretched
as if they came fresh off the ancient plains
surveying all that they possess
feet grounded in the dust that possesses them
Carrying in these joints and bones
       regality unmatched
                    innate
                    genetic

Summer’s girls heading to park council meetings
about the plans for the day
or returning from the corner store
with the spoils of war in one hand
phones in the other

I want to talk about how one of them
has beautiful braids
uniformly done
swirled into a spectacular topknot
I want to discuss,
how the other young lady has
an afro so large that it billows like Wisconsin grass
one might see on a road trip

I don't want to talk about blue bullets
black on black myths
official reports and opinions that lie
I don't want to talk about pink fingers strangling
triggering
dripping with venom
or the stolen power trickling down their guilty hands
into the ink of the reports
so that all lives can matter or whatever

ii.

I don't want to talk about
             fingers
             guns
             batons
             policies
             bullets
             investigations
incomplete
done in nude colored shading to protect virtue
the same color of those mandating
I don’t want policies practices attitudes
that run contra with well intentioned ideas of morality

I want to talk about little boys
with high hair
knobby knowing knees
dirty nails
eyes shaped by the gods
who zip by on bikes up decently manicured streets
past working-class lawns
getting into shit because it's their right
forming the rest of the war council clubhouse
as they circle around beautiful faces with those long legs and straight backs
that they may take for granted, now
but will likely love and dedicate lives to later

I don't want to talk about how
as tax paying citizen grasping at this American dream
I couldn't even call the resource that I pay for
to help when my property was damaged
because I didn’t know how close
I might be to a thug’s mansion in hashtag heaven
if they decided to come

in other cities for anything less than a body they don't even show up

so maybe making us immortal
by pulling the mortal coil
that has got to be as kinky as our hair
is how they keep the quotas up

I don't know
I don't even like math

iii.

I don't want to talk
because these tidings
are eerily similar to things before
Don't want to even be saying this
but I must
because little girls
haughty in their step
diamonds in their backyard they haven't even found yet
hair piled, billowing
on top of their head

I don't want to talk about this because Google can't even pick up my regional accent

but I must
because we are not nude
we are not the default
despite being divine
I'm not enough for video nomination
but I am enough to emulate
to caricature
to cherry pick
a citadel of brick houses to pillage

I don't want to talk about this 

but I must
because though some of us may make the news
there are hundreds more who are never spoken of
not even in the margins
in the spaces between the borders
or where the dreamers are
they are made invisible
except when politically expedient
in certain election years
(though it can be hard to get a direct answer
to a direct question from those seeking to lead us)
there are those who have been here since the beginning
still being tread upon, who cannot
even ask for a name change
without hurt feelings
and the word ‘heritage’ being thrown around

iv.

I'm looking at a picture of a rock formation I don't know if I'm hungry but it kind of looks like a steak which makes me wonder about things bound on earth and bound in heaven which makes me wonder about relativity

if we were connected to the eternality that surrounds us everyday in the rocks who have known lives upon lives or the trees who reincarnate regularly or the wind we breathe in faithfulness would we treat each other differently?

v.

One thing I have known since I was a child:
aside from being magic
(and quite because of this unspeakable ability to be divine)
that for black people
our bodies are apparently so clumsy
our divinity so impaired
that we break our own ribs
burst our own sockets
hang our own selves while burning or waiting to be processed
starve our own selves with unseen hunger strikes
in cells while fighting for liberation
              breathing
              achieving
              liberation of the mind
              if not the self

we trip into gym mats
one shoe on the ground
one foot with a white sock
hiding color transgressions

we tie our own bodies to motors
and jump in lakes to see if we can float

yes we do all these things
when we do not tell our stories

vi.

when we do not tell our stories
straight backed little girls who have the audacity to be beautiful
who have the courage to be young
who have the determination to walk down the street in their power
not needing validation
are simply waiting to be statistics
waiting
to be in a supposed legacy of statistics

when we cannot tell
do not tell our own stories
kinky haired little boys
with knowing knees
on bikes
in groups
making pilgrimage to the park
are rabid
and must be put down for the sake of the herd

when we do not tell our own stories
or when we believe outside counsel and their myths
those bodies are a danger to themselves and others 

they must be monitored
they must be stopped
they must be frisked
because they could be next in a long line of
                “they did it to themselves”
                                 or
                 “if they would just…”

Someone bring me the head of a dinosaur T-Shirt,
so that I can forget the names
the faces
their pain
if i can cope today
maybe i won’t be on edge
if a cop stops me for ‘failure to signal’
maybe i can eat the angry words PTSD would give me
long enough to hug my loved ones again.
......

Genesia Williams, 2015

Listen below: 
 

Baltimore

I've been posting alot on my new pop philosophy page on Facebook, because I like the instant interaction and because I'm on there all day anyway. All posts are public over at Niqsanddimes so feel free to catch up and share. 

I'll try to keep the blogspot updated. That said here is a recent post (composed on Facebook, but shared here):

As we talk about Baltimore and the rest of the nation. I really want folks to realize that the residents of these communities are not a "problem" to be solved. They are people. They are not at fault for the conditions that they have been living in. They did not ask for every house on the block to be boarded up, when there are homeless sleeping in the street. No amount of sagging pants and baggies of crack should be enough to blame these folks for a system they did not create. These are (at best) symptoms, or (at worst) traps to shift the blame to those suffering.

It is offensive to suggest that "if they just" went home, didn't make eye contact, didn't breathe, didn't be human or make mistakes, that somehow the system would disappear.

It is offensive, for Baltimore to have left that curfew up for another second after the main objectives of the moment were met. It is offensive and wrong to suggest that they cannot monitor their own communities regularly. I don't care what the crime rate says. I'm telling you what I know. People may not be doing everything right, but we have to stop looking at each other as broken beyond repair. We are people going through something, being constantly assaulted with neglect, hate, meddling, violence that we did not create. If you put any one in the same boat the same "ills" would crop up (and history has shown this to be true in the US with the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, and the crop of eastern Europeans in the late 80s/90s).

What is sewn will be reaped. Its simple.

If people are cut off from hope and opportunity, if upward mobility is denied to them they are FORCED to wallow in the dust from which they were created. When we were meant to rise, to soar each according to their will and purpose. There is no infrastructure to support this for some folks, but there is a layer of society built on their rotting bones. Bones of the people in Baltimore, in Chicago, in Detroit, all across the nation. People of color, women, children, the poor, and any intersection of the former.

The violence should end, before we demand people clean their own wounds. Freddie Gray is gone. Because of violence he didn't create. All the names we call out are gone because of violence they didn't create. Cities have burned because of violence we didn't create. Because of what was done to us. All the thrown rocks and hidden hands won't make this untrue. Let us go in peace. Stop assaulting us. Stop making up reasons (liberal, conservative, well meaning or otherwise) to strip us of our humanity. Stop taking humanity away from yourself. Stop thinking we are being fixed by ire, by corrective gazes, by handouts followed by judgements or preceeded by pity. Give us our due. Give us our inheritance. Give us what we worked for and stored up. Give us what was stolen. Take hands off of it. Take hands off our equity. Take hands off of us. Stop stealing from us in the night and pretending to be for us in the day. Let us breathe.

Let us breathe.

Why 'Fever' (Peggy Lee) is super, but gives me pause.

Let's briefly do a rundown of the origins of this song. Written in 1956, by Otis Blackwell He also wrote or helped to write, ''Great Balls of Fire,'' & ''All Shook Up'' sung by Jerry Lee Lewis' cousin loving self, and Elvis' thieving self respectively, Blackwell wrote others too, but those are the really well known songs. It was recorded in 1956 by an artist Little Willie John and it did well. It went gold, and was a highlight of this guy's career. Then in 1958, Peggy Lee got hold of the song, adjusted a few lyrics, and it's what you know today. 

It's seductive, vampy, super risque for it's time, and apparently Peggy's was the toned down version. On the surface she's just singing about her man. Her man who gets her hot (thus the high temps, either that or she's sitting on the radiator). She's singing about fever, it's been happening for centuries, people holding each other tight, and giving each other kisses that set them ablaze. I've had a couple kisses that started a small fire in my soul. Most of us have, so this song is awesome for that reason. 

What I don't like, and this is probably really petty on my part, is the corniness injected when Romeo & Juliet, and then Cap'n Smith and Pochantas get in it. The song was HOT, then she slips into this regressive Shakespearean speak, and had Pocahontas talking back to the Chief and what not. In what world, is Pochantas sassin' her pops. Not happening. Sorry. And not for John, particularly because she doesn't even END UP WITH JOHN. 

Finally, and I blame Usher for this, whenever I hear of flaming, burning love I think of VD. I can't help it. When ''Let It Burn'' came out, Usher was rumored to be going through somethings personally (turns out it was really Jermaine Dupri). So his singing about letting things burn just sounded like, he went out and got the package. So for Peggy's R&J to be whispering hot nothings about ''flaming youth'' and ''burning forsooth'' I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen but I just could not go. I am a victim of my times. Also ''forsooth'', is typically used ironically. So no Peggs, no dice. 

Thank you for listening. LOL