"The Resurrected," A Post for My Growing Son

Most of us were born in jungles
in environments surrounded by bounty but
devoid of some fundamental material needed to gather
all that we needed.

Our guardians gave us
what they had and
learned to use to
keep us from
falling
into ravines or
lunging
over certain cliffs
respectively.

Their experiences
taught them to build
certain homes in
certain kinds of ways
in order to teach us
certain kinds of lessons.

Their achievements and failures
were used to inspire us to
venture into new places in a
vast arena of dangers, uncertainty and
dark places.

Our guardians, the mothers and fathers and
aunts and uncles and
grandmothers and grandfathers and
church mothers and pastors,
neighbors and family friends,
whoever they were and
wherever we met them they
showed us life and life and life in
different ways.

But the greatest of our legacy lies in
our capacity to mistakenly or ridiculously
launch ourselves over unknown precipices and
live. Well,
die but live again
in a sense.

Your people,
we are not restrained by fears
as some might be.

We do not hunker down behind the rocks
at the first sound of danger;
we do not
run for shelter at the
very first signs of rain.

We are led by our instinct to
achieve certain goals, to
complete certain assignments, to
acquire certain rewards for
one reason or another.

We run according to our
purposes.

We are not easily manipulated,
and we are not threatened
out of the paths of life
we know we must run.

As a result,
we are sometimes scarred lethally
in the process of making great gains.

We have all seen death in our own ways.

Some of us have lost whole families and
seen our connections to humanity
die and revive
in the presence of
other like-minded runners.

Some of us have
pursued dreams we thought were
worth late nights,
only to find those dreams
far off the path,
and we have seen our hopes then
die and revive
upon finding our footing again.

Some of us have
found our physical health waning,
appearing reliable at some intervals and
showing itself fickle at others,
and we have watched our strengths
die and revive
surprisingly.

And some of us have literally
died and revived
as you know. 

Nevertheless,
the take away here is that
you are a descendant of the
resurrected,
and there are certain inheritances
that come with that birthright.

There are some things I can
plant directly into your hands like an
heirloom,
but there are some things you must
watch and assimilate.

The heirlooms are easy.

What you must learn is the
layout of the land and the
identities of your enemies and the
characteristics of the right paths and the
temptations that lead to the wrong ones.

What you must practice is the
pace of this race and the
ability to recoil quickly and the
ability to go on under pressure and the
ability to stand against adversity.

You need the confidence to
face down devils and
look down the throats of lions
even when you feel fear.

You need to know how to
separate truths from perceptions and
realities from emotions,
and you must never let someone convince you
to make true and eternal
what is only true in one man's eyes.

We are a people under one God with a name,
Yahweh,
and we do not do
what will not lead to
improvement in ourselves,
improvement in our families,
improvement in our communities,
improvement in our world.

We are not limited by time and space,
and we are not defined by our ages,
or our seasons of life,
or our roles,
which are all temporary.

We live to find our God-given niches,
and we take up our designs like 
life jackets in a great sea of confusion.

We are great swimmers in times when
others expect drowning because of the
blessing, because of the blessing, because of the
blessing of our Lord, a Lord for which
many have been slain,
as you well know.

It is difficult to explain to you
in a sitting
the fullness of this family
into which you have been born.

It takes so many lifetimes to understand
that we have ventured to write it all down
one life after another in
journals and poems and short stories and
oral traditions passed from runner to runner
to runner.

You are finally old enough to read and
understand some of these memoirs,
so it is right that you hear it from me first,
as you have seen it in your father,
the head of our home.

You are a part of a resurrected community.
We have been very poor, and we have been rich.
We have been happy, and we have been miserable.
We have been strong, and we have been weak.
We have been young, and we have been old,
but we have never seen ourselves forsaken and our
children have eaten well in famines.

We wear our faith proudly,
and we are not deterred from right
despite others' aggressions and depressions.

Some people will call you crazy.
Some people will call you worthless,
and you will find yourself sometimes lonely and
sometimes in great company.

You must remember the legacy of your lineage and the
connection to our Maker.

It will be difficult and you will suffer much,
but you will suffer well,
and you will make great gains because
that is what we do.

You will live and live and live,
because that is what we do.

-T. D. James-Moss

"The Rocks," A Poetry Post

I am amazed by this witch hunt for
every man's darkness,
by the willful turning over of
stones to find wickedness,
by the crowd-sourced, crowd-funded
judgment of men whose
sins are in print.

If we will throw stones at the glass homes of some,
then we must raise the edges of the stones in our homes and
gather the witnesses to our own indiscretions for the
shattering of our own frail empires.

We must judge rightly and not lightly
every person's "sealed records."
Unseal them and unseat your idols.
Your trusted friends have been criminals:
thieves, rapists and drug dealers,
traffickers and addicts.

They have extorted money from the
elderly.

Winked.

They have served tainted food
at their family parties.

Winked.

They have stolen money
from their children's college funds
to purchase
new cars.

Winked.

If we will throw rocks for the stoning of some,
we must not only stone one but
expect to be hit mercilessly by our
own punishing crowds.

If we will anchor and drown one heretic
for working dark magic on the populace,
we must also tie cement blocks
around the necks of those who
broadcast pornography
to their toddlers
at primetime.

We must bind the mothers
who give their little girls' bodies
freely to the world by
handing over smartphones and
access to private chat rooms without
supervision.

Every strange overnight guest
that has given a man's daughter
a bath
should be
thrashed.

For leaving our offspring with
aunties and uncles to
catch the club bus to
Vegas for the weekend.

For selling our foodstamps
to purchase trendy clothes
at the expense of our
babies' bellies.

For teaching our little boys
how to guzzle alcohol
until they can't remember.

For showing our daughters
how short a
short skirt can be before
all of a woman can be
seen.

For ruining marriages
by drawing away husbands and wives
in their moments of weakness.

For ruining fathers' reputations
by never taking an ounce of responsibility
for building a broken family.

For intentionally lying, lying and lying
to generation after generation and
bringing about the TOTAL DESTRUCTION
of hundreds and hundreds of our descendants,
we must pick up all of the rocks,
all of the stones,
all of the slung insults and
rain them down upon ourselves.

If we will judge rightly and honestly,
all of the rocks we now throw
belong right where they come from...
in the hands--tied down--
to the flingers,
to be worn like bloody jewelry.

But we do not judge so.
We forgive some and not all and
take great pleasure in watching a
sinful man fall and
fall and fall.

We take pleasure in seeing one fall
until our time comes.

-T. D. James-Moss

"Common," A Poetry Post

Our world is expert at
deflowering its virgins.

At breaking through
ancient, pristine ice caps
in pursuit of
crude oils.

At leveling mountains
to establish bastard cities.

At stripping away forests
for traveling convenience.

At pouring poisons into the
purest oceans in our universe.

We are so good at
turning the perfect
common
that we will soon have no
perfections
in common
at all.

-T. D. James-Moss

"What One Mother Gave," A Poetry Post

Some mother-daughter stories
aren't Hallmark quality sweet or
photo album ready.

Some mother-daughter stories
resemble dramatic paperbacks
and dystopias.

Some mothers take
annual pictures with their daughters and
give them
cotton candy pink wardrobes and
manicuring kits and
pictures of themselves in
golden lockets.

Some mothers pass down
trinkets from their mothers.

Some mothers give their daughters
fluffy house slippers and
cookie dough recipes.

But one mother raised
a nation with the
gifts she gave.

To one she gave all of her empathy
so she could be rightfully hard.

To another all of her wanderlust
so she could stand being at home.

To another all of her passion
so she could stand the darkness.

To another all of her love for the church
so she could withstand isolation.

To another all of her ability to recall the good
so she could manage the bad.

To another all of her yearning to teach
to prevent her from mothering all.

To another all of her sciences
to keep her eyes in one direction.

To another all of her drive to fight
to endure the world's coldness in peace.

And all the gifts did pollinate like
wildflowers in the world,
sometimes creating beautiful fields,
sometimes creating teams of freedom fighters,
sometimes creating centers of mercy,
sometimes creating perfect chaos,
sometimes creating sadness and suffering,
sometimes creating massive destruction,
sometimes redefining classrooms,
sometimes redefining prisons,
sometimes redefining households,
sometimes redefining cities.

Out we went to be heartbreakers and healers,
deceivers and truthtellers,
fearful and beautiful,
raging and repentant,
familial but private,
sensual but separated,
all all all of those things connected like
a network of dandelion flowers and
blown out with
one woman's wish to
expand and expand and expand.

All blown out from one hand with
a single breath of hope from
one woman willing to
let them all go and go and go.

And here she stands uncelebrated.
There are no movies made about mothers who
give all of their gifts away to
disappear into obscurity.

They don't write cards that say,
"Thanks mom for letting us dream for things that
you could not provide."

There are no popular books about lives
that writhe and shrivel under the weight
of motherhood.

Nobody's broadcasting specials about
mothers who give up their very minds
in their efforts to tell their children to
go and go and go.

But this is what one mother gave
regardless of the ending. 

She gave all
so we could all
have some.

-T. D. James-Moss

"A Lazarus' Wife," A Poetry Post

The first time it was told to me that
wives received their dead to life,
my eyes shot open in surprise,
a sudden, skeptical surprise.

Now that I've seen the work at play I
cannot fathom what to say to those who
cannot understand the
ease with which God can grant life. 

Quite frankly, I'm a sickler's wife.
I've seen the sleep that erases the line between
the living and the dead and
watched a man wake up instead. 

I've cried the tears that widows cry and
had the bad news calls in mind and
thought ahead to all the acts required
when a husband's died.

I've slept the brief unsettled rests and
smiled the smile of "done my best" and
yet,
as much as I've seen death,
I've seen death come and
seen death left.

I have drawn the long and hot sad baths and
laughed the "Those were good times" laughs and
grieved for wasted times gone past like
many almost widows have.

And yet,
when I have cried and cried and
blown my nose and wiped my eyes and
drained the bath and toweled dry I've found
a dead man
still alive.

I have seen the run come quicks and
thought to myself "This is it" and
hung suspended between faith and
fear that God won't heal the sick.

I have laid my dryness bare and
rubbed Moringa oil in my hair and
dressed myself to see the grave of
men that God did choose to save. 

I have thus concluded, thus,
that life is bigger than all of us.
It is God's will that lets some live and
lets some go on into Heaven.

But I can say I'm not surprised by
when a man lives when he should die since
I have dressed for many deaths and
instead have seen resurrections.

-T. D. James-Moss

"The Secret of Womanhood," A Poetry Post

You spend your whole young life
trying to be attractive
to the opposite sex
only to find out
you were made to be
a terrifying force
in the universe.

-T. D. James-Moss