the next… you will become a threat son you better stop crying you won’t like the places that the rivers will take you and no it doesn’t matter why you feel the way you do it will never ever matter why you feel the way you do if you want to survive you’d better stop feeling the way you do you still crying i said stop crying we’ve never had the luxury of being vulnerable in public you gotta pull yourself together ain’t nobody got the time to wipe your tears somewhere hidden in the pretenses bubbling up from the abysmal narratives collecting dust beneath the rickety staircases you’ll find the expectations the blaring stereotypes the penalties for being anything besides an effigy of life eventually you will find identity in the empty spaces and suspicious whispers eventually you will find a home in the monotonous rage you will learn to love to wear it as a second skin and you will fight any and everything except the inevitability eventually you will accept the inevitability eventually your weeping will be swallowed by the liquor bottles and screaming silences and self-deprecation and emptiness you will see that our feelings became a dead language when our Gods sank somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic inevitably invariably you will be lost in translation viewed through thin blue lines and bank statements and rifle scopes and preconceived notions that always end in your extermination pay attention we ain’t got no mo’ time to waste on this emotional shit we age in dog years and you 6 years old now lil’ nigga it’s over baby don’t nobody think you priceless anymore innocence is a luxury we can’t afford i said get over it stop crying God damn it i’m trying to protect you to prepare you for the antagonism that it is to be a nigga get a clue this is your education trade in your daydreams for blank faces and pragmatism our humanity is a revolution that ain’t had a chance to happen as of yet so shut yo little bitch ass up… before they hear you... someday behind the ice grills and the iron gates in the middle of the regimented fields and the genetic memories in the crimson tinted hands of king cotton and sugarcane bitterness in the midst of the oral and urban decay you will discover the muted desperation of being incomplete we are still searching for our missing pieces our other 2 fifths the fraction that would make us something other than expendable the fraction in which they hid our grins and convinced us we didn’t need them and convinced us we didn’t need each other and convinced us we didn’t need anyone ‘cause it’s better to be feared than loved leaving us feeling alone in crowded rooms and street corners and prison yards and contemplations and relationships perpetuating the cycle generation after generation beating the sweetness out of our babies ‘til they stop crying - i said stop crying fix your face this is your education no time no need to keep pretending you can be like them no time no need for existential considerations at the end of the day we have to survive even if we have to give our lives to do it ----------------------Selection from the recently published book My Big Black Audacity: Poems by Karega Ani
By Any Means Necessary
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