Telling God
it's unfair to
take
one of His own
home
is like
telling a father
that he
cannot
take his
good son out
for an
ice cream cone
after
a long hard day
at
school.
The father
would
say:
What
right
do
you
have
to
decide
for
me
what
I
do
with
my
child?
Ma,
I was so busy being grateful,
busy being grateful today that I
couldn't say nothing.
Nothing.
I was overwhelmed by the fact that
30 days ago we were both
locked down in
hospital beds and
subject to team rounds and
neither one wound up
dead.
Nothing.
I was overwhelmed by the fact that
twenty years ago we were both
locked down in
section 8 housing
there in New Community
striving and
neither one wound up
dead.
Nothing.
I was overwhelmed by the fact that
ten years ago we were both
locked down in some sticky situations
that left us
grappling with issues
between us and
identity crises and
neither one wound up
dead.
Nothing.
I was overwhelmed by the fact that
we both lost our mommas but I
got mine back.
Nothing.
I wanted to say something brilliant,
prolific.
I wanted to say something
people like us could feel.
I wanted to say something brilliant,
prolific but
I was so grateful, grateful...
just having survived it.
Nothing.
I wanted to say something brilliant,
prolific.
I wanted to say something demonstrating
how much I am grateful... but...
I was in the back room
sitting with my back
pressed up on a pillow,
sleeping.
Nothing.
And you were at your own place
probably with your back
pressed up on a pillow,
sleeping.
And everything I could say...
has been said in that picture,
two mommas
so glad, breathing and surprised
we survived it.
Pushing on me
Pulling on me
Shining on me
Beating on me
Grinding on me
Sidelining me
Please.
Your ego...
Open up a window baby
I can't breathe.
It's the
way that you
think the
whole world owes you
tribute, your
ego...
Ooh... listen...
I can't breathe.
Your pomposity...
wraps itself around my neck and it
squeezes...
freezes me
seizes me
please free me
obviously
I am
too low to be
worthy, your
ego...
I'mma leave early.
I can't breathe.
It's the way
you feel
you must prove
you are
superior.
Nobody
got time to
behave
that much
inferior.
And to think I tried to...
and to think I tried
proves I
should go, your
ego...
Look how much better things could be!
I can't breathe!
If you'd
stop now and reflect
in the retrospect
you'd know your
obnoxious
bragadocity
shows out to the crowd
like a bad spray tan, we
know you didn't hit the bay man
you a fake man
we need a break man from your
ego...
And you're beautiful but baby,
I can't breathe.
Your top swag
is a
sugar rimmed margarita,
sweet taste, late high,
big drag, tall glass,
ego...
And you know I can't keep drinking!
I can't breathe.
In the
universe
there is
still not enough
room here
for the
two of us, your
ego...
I'm leaving boo!
I can't breathe here.
Too much I'm the man See me I'm the man
in your atmosphere.
Hey pretty girl
Heard that you lost your man
How long has it been
That long
That's sad I
Meant to call you then
Didn't know just what to say
Haven't seen you in a while
Time flies
Can't help it now
You were such a pretty little thing
back then
independent swag
boss type
did your own thing I
Couldn't take a step
Couldn't step up to the plate at the time
I'm a man now girl...
I'm a man now, and,
if you let me girl
I can be your boo thang.
I'll come over.
I don't need a ticket
I can pay for my flight
I don't need your nice house
I can put us in a Westin
You don't even have to drive
I can rent a nice ride
You don't have to pack a bag
I can dress you girl
Meet me outside and
Baby if you let me now
I can be your boo thang.
I'll come over.
I don't need a maid
You don't have to lift a hand
You probably still grieving
I can understand
After all, we grown now
I can see a need that
I'm wanting to please
You don't have to pay me
I'll do it for you
Baby if you let me
I can be your boo thang.
I'll come over.
I don't have to stay
You know I bought my own place
Out there in the mountains
I can come that way
Be there for a few days
Maybe stay for a week
I can set my own schedule
It's a simple thing for me
I could put myself on loan for you
It's a good deal
Get your mind off your troubles
Give you something you can feel
For a little while
Older now I got a set of skills
That you'll like...
I've already decided
You just say the word
and I'm leaving here stat and
bringing you your boo thang.
I'll come over.
You don't have to be my wife
I'm not asking for commitment
I'm not asking you to
Put up with the stress of my business
I don't really have to talk
You don't really have to listen
If you give me the permission
We'll go missing on a mission
If you let me baby,
I can be your boo thang.
I'll come over.
I know the role
We can walk through the park
Holding hands, slow strolling
Schedule reservations for massage and
Good eating
Movies and back seating
Wine and hard breathing
Baths and late sleeping
I mean it...
This is not an offer that
I can make twice
I done put myself out there
Need nothing in return
It's a package that I feel
That you've earned and
I always had it for you girl
I always had it for you
Couldn't tell you
By the time I
Got up enough nerve
Another man took it from me
I thought it was all over and
Now the season's changed
I... hmm...
Baby I don't have to be THE man
I just want to be your man
For as long as you want me
So have me
I can be your boo thang.
I'll come over.
It's a simple thing.
Boo thang...
If you say "Yes"
I'm leaving tonight and
I'll come over.
Don't thing about it too much.
I can be your boo thang...
I'll come over, yes.
And you can be my princess
For as long as you want
For as long as we can stand it.
It was a busy breakfast, so busy that there were no tables or chairs open in the common space, so my son chose to sit down his waffle and fruit selection on a modern sectional in the lobby. The weather was beautiful, a sunny 75 at 8:45 in the morning, no chilly breezes. After throwing our overnight bags in the trunk, grandpa and I came back through the automatic doors to find a victor, sitting on the edge of an open sofa, staring into a nowhere to his far left, thinking.
And I too was thinking, deeply... not because there was so much to do on this particular day and not because of all the new faces we were going to see... but because of the face we would not. I had seen the grief arrive and park like a fast train when he got out of bed that morning. It made him move slowly. It made him feel heavy. It made him unable to celebrate that he had completed one lap of many laps. It taunted him without mercy, saying So, you have finished one challenge. There will be another, and you might lose.
It was easy to identify his state of mind because throughout the previous day and night, the same grief had assailed me, reminding me all at once of the cost we used to pay as a trio--Mother, Father, Son--to achieve such an honor, such an academic distinction. It was a painful process of home studies, summer practice schedules, choke-tight curfews, choice and consequence, cancelled weekend trips, rushed test preps and late-night accountability talks. It was are you thinking about your future wrap sessions at 6 a.m. It was a ride we started together, swinging... taking hard hits at times and being found wanting, lacking, beaten and saturated... but it started with three.
Today, on this day, only two remained, and it didn't matter then that after the fight there was something to celebrate. Not just yet. What mattered was taking that seat next to my son on that sectional, sitting catty cornered and finding my own nowhere into which to peer. It was a strange feeling. Just eight years ago, he was small enough to gather up into my arms and rush down the stairs when he was ailing. Now he sat by me, a set of shoulders that stood higher than mine in profile, wearing his father's chain, a young man into whose eyes I must look up into... and in that moment in time, the grief rested equally upon us like a great, descending robe.
I wanted to be prolific, but I didn't have the wherewithal to say anything worth remembering. I decided to settle on the truth. You have to deal with one piece of stress at a time, son. It is enough that today you are starting a new path in life. Let's try to enjoy that and deal with the grief later. It is your day. The odds were against us, but we made it. Your father would be proud... all these being things that I'd had to say to myself when I too got out of bed that morning feeling as if I'd survived a great car accident and wasn't supposed to.
There were tears, sure. We hid them in our own ways... him by dabbing his eyes between breakfast bites and me by rehearsing a don't fall apart speech on repeat in my mind. We were brave for each other, like mother and son would be. On this particular occasion, it became painfully obvious to both us, perched there on the sofa, that we had won something and lost everything. The fresh starting point was pristine and sparkling, having never been ran, but we were walking up to it wincing and battered, lanced open in places from the previous trials. It was hard to lift up our hands and be champions in the presence of the pain. It was hard to be proud and be broken.
So, we sat quietly, and I let him know that the magnitude of the moment could not, would not make sense until he had lived longer and seen more. This was true, because I would not have understood it if I had not lived longer and seen more. And we faced the day, winners, awash in the bitterness of missing our chief contender, flooded with sadness over what we could not recover, sore from the heavy lifting of the last ten months, bleeding.
Mr. President,
this is Mrs. America,
married to certain principles,
standing against hysteria,
woken from anesthesia,
woozy but I don't care I got
one chance to make it clear to ya
Mr., I'm not scared of ya.
No,
I'm not an innocent,
did some things I regret and I
said some things that I shouldn't and
haven't lived it down yet but I
know when I'm in the red
versus when I am in the black
and while I was over here sleeping, Sir
you've been setting me back.
You've been
toying with the economy
profiting from your office and
spending my tax dollars like
I cover your losses and
cutting out social programs while
padding pockets of bosses and
dishonoring people who
ask you about the costs.
You're
flaunting your phallic status like
I was a poor Geisha
you bought from a sex trader
and lowering women's status
and proud to be foul about it and
came out your mouth about it
and paid your porn stars and pussies
with money out of my wallet.
You're
celebrating amendments that
you've never seen played and you're
cutting deals with some nations that
never should have been made and you're
shaking hands with constituents
out on the world stage that have
never given me love and will
always take it away and you
thinking that I will stay.
And running these violent rallies where
Hispanics, Blacks and Women are
treated like common alley cats you know I don't believe in that
kicking out the Hondurans and
terrorizing the Dreamers and
trying to shut the borders when
I'm surrounded by water and
crossing it when I oughtta...
I'm one of the world's daughters...
The world... it can afford us.
You're
making me watch in shame as you
make a fool of Melania
I'm sorry, my first lady
at least I know how to honor her
wherever you found her and
whatever she was then I am
telling you she belongs to me, Mr.
I feel offended.
Listen,
you've had your bath and I'm
sure it was a great laugh since you've
publicly talked trash about
anybody who asked if you
understood what it meant to
makes moves inside of my house
and if you couldn't humiliate,
you simply ran 'em out.
But I'm saying, I'm not playing, Sir.
This is me standing breathing
and proving to you and others that
lo... my heart's beating and
just because I've been drugged and
just because I've been cheated... don't blink
Mrs. America
I will not be defeated.
I've seen it.
I'm not at war with outsiders,
I got spies and
most of them are recruited and kept
right under your eyes and I'm
trying now to be patient and
trying to play it cool but
I promise, I'm feeling warm and I'm
ready to bend some rules since you
underfunding the schools and you
killing bank regulations and
spewing garbage online to my people
and other nations and
going light on your squad while
giving poor people the hammer and
insulting the press while
using incorrect grammar.
Trying to change a tax code and
not releasing your taxes and
promising me new industry...
keeping your foreign backers.
This is me, praying,
I'm saying, I'm not playing,
I'm younger than most nations but
volatile in my ways and I've
sat quietly still to give
you a chance to repent
and instead of you seeking mercy
you keep on bringing me sin and
this is me...
Heart beating
I know that I've been away
I was comatose, I must say and
divided up in a way that
did not allow me to hear
from the people I love the most.
I see it.
I meant the best but I failed you.
It's not over.
Dear
Mr. President,
peace is a fickle thing and it's me
Mrs. America
brave, angry and free and you're
saying that closing borders is
keeping the threats out but me... you know my name by now...
I know what that's about.
You're really locking me in and then
blocking out world perspectives and
saturating my timeline with
well planned misdirectives and
yesterday I was woozy and
yesterday I was down but I'm saying,
I'm not playing...
get up or step down.
It was Nigeria first. :) I was on the phone with Christine a few weeks ago when she asked me, What is it with you and Nigeria, and I had to think back... back to 2010 when--finally--I'd gathered enough nerve to post my very first public blog entry. I had no idea if anyone would even read it. It was just a notion, an act that I felt had to be completed because writers write, and I hadn't written or performed anything creatively for a public audience in some time. I was newly married and a new mother in a new country, and it was hard to get oriented. What can I do, I thought. There was only one option... I had to write something down.
The first entries were non-fiction, semi-autobiographical. I suppose that was my attempt at exorcising whatever frustrations I felt as an artist and a person, but even now I find those entries quite dry and unappealing. When I put down my need to be dignified and just wrote whatever I felt, something interesting began to happen: an audience. And it wasn't just any audience. It was an audience composed mostly of Nigerians.
I had never been to Nigeria, neither had I ever met a Nigerian face to face... it baffled me that despite my intention to reach my home country, I was a full 5600 miles off with no reference for how to feed the psyche of the people. Why are you reading me, I thought. I have nothing to offer you.
From here, let's step back an additional nine or ten years into the year 2000... the first time I held Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Things Fall Apart exposed me to a cultural history that put the world into perspective. After all, it was one thing to read the historical documents and another thing to see into the hearts and minds of an affected people. Through his brilliant storytelling, Achebe reinforced in me all I inherently knew about circumstantial evolution. I knew what that was about... when you were raised in New Community in Newark (before they blew up the high rises), you understand how socioeconomic and political circumstances can and do require change.
Finally, let's spring forward... to 2012... the first time that I asked myself, What is with you and Nigeria? My love for art stretches far beyond the few things I say about this or that in blog pieces, open mics and online broadcasts. It all moves me: visual arts, dance, music, literature... protest pieces... all of it. So, you can't be surprised that on some day in 2012, which day I can't remember, I said to myself, I wonder what their music is like. And who did I find first, climbing the Nigerian charts as a fresh face to the world? Flavour N'abania and Blessed.
Nigeria, if you are offended that I found Flavour first, don't be. You know I'm in America and all they play on mainstream radio is rap music from three or four cities.
If you know me, you may think I was listening to Black is Beautiful, but it was actually Ada Ada that turned my attention to what I felt was a deeply rooted honesty in Nigerian music. My late husband sat beside me in the car one day listening to it, and he looked at my curiously. Where did you find that song? I had simply found it by accident on YouTube, but for years after that, we were listening to it on occasion, driving back from Savannah, GA, playing it on the way to one of our 8:30 p.m. dates. Shake confirmed for me that despite the distance, Nigeria and I were connected. That's just the right thing to be listening to on a Tuesday afternoon, I don't care who you are.
This is the story of a Nigerian love affair, a relationship that spans a full twenty years without me setting so much as a foot in the country since I first began interacting with her people. Today, the USA has finally caught up to Nigeria in my blog audience page views, but I won't ever forget that it was Nigeria who loved me first. I don't know why she did it, but I appreciate it. Whatever I can do for her, I will.
Sister Nigeria,
growing your economy,
flaunting your
young entrepreneurs
and innovators
like the folds of a
grand gown
for the world to see...
Your wealth
has gotten
the attention of men
who
want to
extort it
again.
But
it is
not the
many men
from without
that you must fear.
It is the
men from within.
The men who
through their
radical religious beliefs
are
abducting your
young daughters and
ripping away their
presents and futures
by severing ties with
female elders
and
enacting
forced
marriages.
The men who
unchecked
by a
Ministry of Agriculture
roam
the fields of
private
properties,
murdering residents
in the name of
cultivating crops and
domesticating
animals.
Men who
use the
country's coffers
to buy
second and third and fourth wives
while
men with
one wife and
many mouths to feed
struggle to
bring up food
from the hard, hot dust.
Men who
join militias
to perform
lynchings
for their friends.
Men who
use their
political and religious statures
to convince
the
working poor
that
the door to prosperity
is through
hero worship...
My Sister,
Nigeria,
you must not fear so much
the hands of the
foreign man.
It is your brother,
your father,
the son that you raised
that is
reaching up under your skirts
to circumcise you.
Because he is smiling like he always did
and he looks like you,
I know
you are tempted
to believe that
he is family
and he will
come around.
But it is not true Sister.
It is not true.
Do you not see his arm?
Do you not see him standing there,
propped up under you to
steal your pleasures?
If he says to you I am not your father, I am not your brother, I am not your son,
does that change the fact
that he is?
If he says to you it is the fault of the colonizer it is the fault of the first world it is the fault of the lazy youth,
does it change the fact
that he holds the knife?
What are you doing,
my Sister,
turning and turning
like a pre-teen
at a prom?
Do not stand there
held hostage by the
black-face smile
of your persecutors,
your leaders,
your preachers,
your self-proclaimed saviors.
A woman's heart is
the world's most mysterious
bank vault,
protected by an outer steel door,
motion detection and on-sight security,
poison darts and projectiles,
city-grid alarms.
Surrounded by
cement walls and
dug down
deep into its earth,
resisting entry
from
alternative pathways.
Any man
must be wise
with eyes wide open
to lay his hands
on the 5-spoke handle,
since
he will need to
locate the place,
gain access to the outer room,
negotiate the preliminaries,
open a deposit account,
stock a safe deposit box,
get employed within the system,
be trusted with the codes and
given vault keys.
Any man
must be wise
with eyes wide open
since
she
may still misread,
may still impale you with the
sharp memories
of her past,
may still
mistakenly
dump your account
after a mistaken overdraft,
may still
call the authorities
after you've
entered the right security pin.
And then,
that man...
God bless him...
might have to begin again.
But her heart,
so vaulted,
can be opened,
can be accessed,
can be relaxed,
can be approached,
can be impressed upon
by your warm imprint,
can be softened.
With your efforts,
a great master key
can be forged,
one that
satisfies
all
lock-down
stipulations.
And,
key in hand,
the diligent man
can open the front door,
walk through the lobby,
shake hands,
present his love...
the remnants of a miracle...
and perform wonders
for all to see.
And all she will hear
and feel
is the great lock's
click.
