A Message
An old piece of mine, but posting because I wanna get more active here!
The unbearable weight of injustice sits on that intangible space in the center of my chest. A weight of emptiness. The pregnant absence tugging in that spot behind where my heart is. An excess of lack. A pit, an abyss down in a part of me so indelible, so deep my hands can’t reach. Only accessible through deep heaves and moans which rumble from my gut leaving the taste of my intestines plastered over my coated tongue. My nose scrunches and my eyes water at the stench of the shit you force down my throat. I hold my stomach as my body regurgitates it. I scream and cry in silence as it gushes out of every orifice. I lose myself in a sea of dull pain. So I shut myself away from the world to catch my breath. I lay down in the darkness and wait for it all to start again. You start it again. You keep it going. You hurt me. You hurt us.
And then you smile to the world with the blood of our souls dripping from your fingers. And I expect nothing more of you. Part of me hopes one day you will look down and see the carnage underneath your fingernails. And every day you bury my faith deeper and deeper in despair. Leaving flowery words and lies over the grave where my hope lay. A eulogy delivered to erase and forget. And to keep us down you get dirty. To force us under, you drag your name through the mud and the shit. The mud and the shit you seem to enjoy wallowing within. And you revel with the eyes of the devil, smearing yourself in your feces. And from beneath the ground we see. We see you make a mockery of all that you teach. And we reach in hopes to grab hold of you and help you see what we see. But with your hand around our throats, you squeeze, and we choke.
And with bulging eyes we keep pushing, with burning eyes we keep pushing, with bloody heads we keep pushing. My soul has been rubbed raw by your inaction. Dulled and numbed to a state of dysfunction. My eyes are wet all day and all night. But you don’t care if I cry. You don’t care if I scream. You only care when I lift my hands and place them on the walls that keep you safe. And give it a shake. And make you feel the smallest percent of how I feel on the inside. The tiniest possible taste of how they feel each day. Unsafe. You leave me sprawled out and gasping, grasping for a modicum of understanding. No.
No. You tell me not to be a person sprawled out gasping, grasping for a modicum of understanding. You teach me that I need to carve out the history that I want to leave behind. You teach me to put love and peace and affection and understanding first. You teach me to spread my community as far as possible. You teach me the atrocities of the past as a way of moving forward. You teach me Sankofa.
But you are scared of me truly looking backwards as I step forward. You are scared of me seeing, unearthing, expressing, displaying, announcing, declaring how your—how our institution is built on lies and deceit. And uprooting it as we charge into a better tomorrow. You are scared of me taking changing the world into my hands. Because what does that mean for you? You who benefit from all of the privilege. You who have lived each day of your lives on stolen land ignoring the history of genocide and reality of oppression you reinforce. You who so easily watch the innocents of the world burn and go on absolutely ok with it.
You are scared of me actually doing what you ask of me. You are scared of my love. You are scared of my empathy. You are scared of how much I long and yearn for peace. And I am scared of the pigs you summon down to torment me. I am scared of their soulless eyes and how quickly they resort to brutality. I am scared of your smiles, your words, because I know how little they mean. I am scared to know what you consider human. I am scared I just may not fit what you envision. I am terrified at what the inside of your mind looks like for you to be ok with all this killing. I am terrified of the dark places my mind goes when I sit alone in my room in the evening.
As I lay in bed at night. When I wake to start the day. Every day. Every day I push away thoughts of revenge. Every day I swallow visions of brutal retaliation. Every day I wonder what you would do if I could swap your body with someone else’s for just a moment. So you could see, and feel, and smell, and hear, and taste death and destruction right in front of you. Take your theory of nonviolent retaliation and put it into practice. Would you see yourself as a lesser human being deserving of the end, or would you fight? Would you scream and cry and run and curse and pray for your god to show you mercy? Would you think there has been some mistake? That you have awoken from a dream of being an oppressor only to find that you are in fact the oppressed? And if given the chance, would you retaliate with violence to save your own precious, fragile, little life? You probably would. Just like you do now. Your hypocrisy knows no bounds. Helping to steal land while living on stolen land destroying the rightful owners with your very hands.
It would be hypocritical of me to enact or enable physical violence after using this piece to condemn your actions. It should be known that my following dream for pain and anguish should exist only in your head. I don’t condone physical violence, I only hope that those who feel targeted by this writing take the time to reflect on their actions and beliefs. I say this because I know how you like to confuse shit, use shit, take, twist, and abuse shit.
With that being said,
I hope you dream about it at night. I hope your subconscious becomes your hell. I hope that every image you see of someone dead or struggling in a land blown to smithereens, your mind recreates with images of your family. And I hope that at night you toss and turn and scream in your sleep. I hope that it tears you apart at the seams. And I hope when you wake up to reality, in your comfy bed, your clean house, your fresh food, clean water, loving family, smiling children, that your world shakes and rumbles, because you can’t get over the thought that this space is only a quickly fading dream.
I hope the eyes of your children stare at you, angry, gaunt, starved, full of tears and despair, and before being left lifeless, latch onto your soul. And when you blink during the day you see their mouths and bodies contorted to the point that you can hear their screams. Screams bouncing around in your head til it drives you insane. Until all you can hear are the blood curdling screams of your dying, burning children screaming your name.
And if my wish doesn’t come true, if you aren’t haunted by your wrongdoings when you sleep, then you truly are evil. You have slept with the devil and he has left his juices all in you. You have become a seeping abscess leaking puss, dripping poison, leaving death and despair in your wake. So when you lay your head on your pillow tonight and close your eyes, I hope you open them to the hell you helped them orchestrate and design. Because maybe when you come face to face and look into his eyes, you will find in his reflection that you were the devil the whole time.
To all my family far and wide, kiss each other on the shoulders and hold each other tight. Share a touch and a breath of love together as we continue the fight.
Peace, Love, and Power
Àṣẹ