Am I?

There was once a time when questions were easier to come by than answers, but I have learned now, that I already know the answers to questions which have yet to be disclosed.  I have seen the solutions within the mouths of disparaging complications.  I have watched these solutions suckle on the tit of dilemma and fervently coo on with gurgles of wisdom, but all to befall deaf ears.  I mistook it for clamor though my innards listened close.

                The problem we all seem to agree on in race relations is the deficit of physical sameness.  I preclude that it is much more than that and ambiguously indifferent to scalar quantification.  It is an irony of such magnitude that it blooms implosively, folding in on itself finding never-ending detail to its detail.  It is OK.  For I’ve heard words yet to be spoken and have seen the pain in the eyes of those who’ve sought to humble me, but my humility lacks not.  Please understand that what you choose to halt is in essence awaiting such attempts, attempts which breathe fiery life into the pools of kerosene blood that we have collectively harnessed.  You sought to destroy, but did not know – you sought to know, but did not understand.  And and but when you sought to understand, all accrued knowledge was destroyed by non-acceptance of the simpler facts and the disbelief of things which needed not be questioned.

                You were merciless, be proud.  You were a force to be reckoned with, accept that valor.  You were the czars of conquest, the monarchs of mayhem, the liege of lies and bloodlust, I commend you.  Please, revel in that glory, I entreat you to that.  I thank you, and stand erect, with your brand on my chest.  I accept that I am as your child.  You made me.  You made a man who’s bones have grown dense to withstand the gravity of the plights you have made my everyday habitat.  You have rounded my shoulders in muscular in muscular mass to support the burdens you’ve heaped upon them.  You have sharpened my eyes so that I may see through the guise of mortals and unveil the cloak of demigods.  I thank you for these things.  I understand and respect and accept and perhaps modestly exemplify all that you were, but pay heed to who I AM. 

I am not me, I am we.  I am the consciousness that cannot be compromised.  I am the word which needs not be spoken.  Iam where you do not look.  I have risen.  It is my time now, as your dusk is upon you.  You thought that I would subtly rear my head, giving time for resistance.  No.  I am.

You need not fear me, for I do not bring death.  I bring life to the lifeless.  I have suffered deprivation of the unalienable, still I am.  I have understood degradation and fastened my feet inot the soil so that I may not buckle.  In the stage of my life, of first conception, you denied me, you said that I did not exist.  Throughout my embryonic development within your womb, you poisoned me by gorging yourself on the perversions of irony: giving God to the godly, giving wisdom to the wise, chastening the chaste and freeing the free.  You took the liberty of redefining language at whim:  protection, discovery, the law, the holy; and I turned in the belly of the earth waiting to be birthed.  And when the time, by natures choice, arose for me to swallow my first taste of air, you would not release me from the womb.  You held me there hoping that I would be unborn; that the defiled uterus of your malice would contract about my throat and that I would stifle on the indignations coiled around me.  An attempt, but still I am.  With macabre resolveI tore through the recess of my maternal prison, and of time and of continents and of islands and seas and fields, haciendas, yoke and suffering.  My initial travail was an onerous one, but never the less, I am.

                On my outset into the world, I was misled and exploited.  You took my trust and mangled it, you took my gratuitous insight and called it ignorant, only to peddle it at a later date for profit.  You bled me and allotted me only the barest portion of this gore to dampen my parched lips.  Still, for this minute amount, I showed gratitude.  You see I am no longer that child, but a man I am.  Reaching throughout the expanse of space and time, touching those far and near.  My mind rages with all the fury of an encaged bore, craving, lusting knowledge that was once beyond my grasp.  You would not allow me to come into manhood, still, I am.  As I entered adolescence you said with a smile and kind gesture, “No, here my friend you may not be”, and I replied, “But, I am”.

                Then as for insult to injury, you said, “No, my friend, these things are not for you to understand,” and I replied, “Relinquishing my ignorance, I am”

                Because of such audacity, such tenacity, you smiled and said, “My son, you are ready to be a man, I accept you as I am, and love you equal to the kin of my loins, : and I lavished the adoration and sat with you, and feasted with you and laughted with you, and slept, full of food and mirth, as you slept awake, creeping over my slumbering form, an ax in hand above your head – you struck, with all of the desperation of a fish on a fisherman’s hook, beating about, choking on the dryness of the air, at my sleeping form, hacking it to bits, sullying your home with the carnage of my corpse.  You did not like me, you did not love, you did not want me, you did not accept me, and I did not sleep.  Please look again at the slain, it was not me.  Please examine close to see blood of your blood, instead of mine, upon your sleeve and face.  I am here, I am awake, I am alive, I am aware, with sarcasm I say, “My friend, I am.”

For this guile and wit you hated me, but for the lessons our shared history has taught us, I adore you.  I credit you and chortle at you.   Once again, the men deemed prtectors, protect the fragile weavings of a society built on the foundation of contempt, synchronously, making efforts to strip me of my manhood, all failed.  I am.  Displeased I am – abhorred I am, all of this ingrained in my heart, but standing fast I am.

Have you yet understood who I am?

                I am the inertia of the universe, turning about itself, within itself, on the axis of itself.  I am the essence of what is feared and cherished, I am the moment between life and death, I am what cannot be stopped.

For each time I am disassembled, there will be ten to replace me, equally fortified and palatial.

I am a tower, erected in the midst of desolation, my base deeply fixed in to the soil – my mobility at angst with my endeavor to remain perpendicular to the despair about me.

I will not stand forever, my form will be deconstructed.  I will not fall, but my shattered pieces will descend onto the ground to lay dormant, however, impromptu to the blackening of the sky, a darkness caused by the ashes of my smoldering figure.  A tower whose peak once punctured the sun – glistening as the sun’s dew seeped through this accidental orifice, dribbling down my lateral.  I will appear beaten and broken, into many pieces which have all descended onto the ground to lay dormant, however, impromptu, to the rain that falls from this blackened sky.

Each piece of I will soak up the airs’ moisture, the dampness of the clay it lay on, the clay it came from.  At that moment, not subtly, giving time for resistance, those pieces shall explode into the sky standing to replace me, equally fortified and palatial.  You, my friend, will be forced to tread between the mountains and caverns that these new factions have formed.

But it is not important that you understand or respect or accept or even modestly exemplify these facts, it is for you to know simply – that I am.