I’m kind of bummed that Real Toads is so close to ending their amazing run, so I’m trying to contribute more to their remaining prompts. It’s bittersweet, but as with most finite things within our cosmos, nothing lasts forever.
An ethereal inversion;
the television’s moonbeams
combining with darkness
masking our mockery;
our shared laughter at
your expense for once
instead of your typical
plucking at our insecurities
with orchestral precision; you,
still the chillest cat in the room,
but your arsenic-tipped wit
replaced by Bible psalms,
and sincerely, instead of
your standard
“The Lord is your shepherd, you shall not want”
atheist parodies.
You didn’t seem to mind,
but in the upside-down,
for once,
the egg was on your face.
I awoke still laughing
at your absurdity.
Dad, you were such a
magnificent bastard back then;
just a gloriously
belittling jackass.
I feared drawing your attention
almost as much as I craved it.
We all hated verbally sparring with you
because you’d gut us like catfish
while taking far more care
not to drop cigarette ash on
your freshly cleaned carpet.
We hated being victims
almost as much as we loved
being living witnesses
to your eviscerations.
But this time, we got your ass.
We ganged-up and nailed you
and that pompous Jehri-Curled afro
to the fucking wall.
You took it surprisingly well
given your massive ego,
but there was no mistaking it;
Boom! Roasted!
On a night we all saw
our man Jordan
get dunked on
and his Bulls lose
by thirty points.
I awoke still laughing
at your comeuppance.
I reached for my cell
to give you a call to remind you
and rub it in your face again;
that you’d finally been dunked-on
by those you’d repeatedly roasted
countless times; after all,
they say you only roast
the ones you love, right?
But as I grabbed my phone to dial you
the punchline came; I remembered it all;
that it was only a dream;
that not once did we ever
get the better of you;
that you probably never would’ve
been cool with that anyway;
that we never watched MJ
lose by thirty with you;
that I’d long forgotten
your phone number;
that in my contacts list
there was a blank spot
where your name should be;
that I hadn’t spoken to you
for nearly a decade,
months before you died.
Sure, whenever I complete a form
that’s nosey enough to ask,
I check the corresponding square,
but I’m just some random guy
born into a reddish-brown shell, and
there’s no option for human doing his best,
given the tattered incomplete playbook
passed down for generations.
Everything I learned about being black
I learned from others, from momma’s
early-warning games that life’s not fair,
the playing field isn’t level,
and the rules are different for folks
who look and sound like us; that the
difficulty settings are disproportionately
skewed; that there are folks who hate me
at first sight, before I could even begin
to hope to win them over
with a smile and a silly joke.
Being black can be tricky, but
what can I definitively
tell you about being black?
You’re better off asking one of my
blood relatives who are black and proud;
I don’t know if I’m not black enough
or not proud enough, but by all accounts,
and my admission, it’s probably both.
I’m amused by the idea of claiming pride
in something I had no control over;
it’s not like I achieved anything; it’s not
like I’m one of the best blacks like Barack
or Beyoncé or K-Dot; I’m just some dude
who popped out of his momma with
reddish-brown skin, a fear of
creepy-crawlies, and a love of words.
Being black can be bemusing, but what
can I honestly tell you about being black?
To be honest, I don’t think about it
very much these days, not unless
circumstances compel me to.
I’m certainly not doing it right,
just ask anybody with the
privilege of voicing opinion;
I don’t speak the language well enough
for anyone; if I’m confident, I’m too uppity;
if I’m insecure, I need to be saved
from my own ignorance; if I’m silent,
I’m one of the sneaky ones; if I’m loud,
I’m one of the angry ones; if I’m
actually angry, I’m a threat
that needs to be stopped by any means
that will most likely withstand
judicial scrutiny.
Being black can be maddening, but
what can I unequivocally
tell you about being black?
It would seem that I’m unqualified
to say for absolute certain.
My chest rises and falls to its own cadence.
I smile big smiles, laugh belly-laughs, and
dream dreams like any other common human.
Tears well in my eyes, and I weep
openly during sappy love stories,
or when a vigilante is acquitted
by his peers for murdering one of my peers.
(Granted, we’re all peers, but my neglecting
to use first-person singular possessive here
could be perceived as not black enough.
Refer to “being black can be tricky” above.)
I have irrational fears of spiders and zombies,
and a hyper-rational fear of meeting
the wrong policeman in a dark alley
after fitting the description.
You know the description;
it’s always the same description.
Being black can be terrifying.
But what can I fearlessly
tell you about being black?
It can be tricky, bemusing,
maddening, terrifying,
all these things at once,
and sometimes, when I’m alone,
staring at the stars above
on the blackest night,
as starlight takes eons to reach
where blackness has already been,
waiting indifferently for it,
it is an absence of all these things,
for when the cosmos
overpowers my brown eyes
with overwhelming proof
of my own individual insignificance,
that is when the truth speaks to me,
that being black is human,
and is but one of many facets
of our collective humanity.
***
Trigger warning: The video below contains satirical graphic gun violence.
Inspired by dVerse dVerse Poetics: On Shades of Black, hosted by anmol(alias HA). Other writers contributed to the prompt here. I know this one’s in dire need of editing, but I may leave it as is, as it came from an honest thread of thought.
Hephaestus’ Waste & Cosmic Rubble 