I am black. I am white.
I am selfish. I am kind.
I am sensitive. I am cold
All these are wrong.
What I am is contrast.

Swirling shades of skin
Shades of personality
Shades of morality
Shades of grace
Shades of weakness

These shades of self-identity
They do not make me good
They do not make me evil
They make me human

The walls that I think cage me
Are just the skin of a cocoon
My wings lie beneath my skin
Ready to be unfurled and seen

I am caterpillar.
I am butterfly.
I am neither.
I am both.

Typing on my keyboard
It’s a long term suicide note
Made up of keystrokes backlit red
By wounds that have yet to open
Anxiety pulsing through me like
Neon in Blade Runner, a synth
Soundtrack pounding at the base of my skull

Thump, thump, thump goes the bass
A fist pounding on a door
The rhythm makes me want to dance
Along a New Orleans funeral parade
A lavender coffin with white gardenias
I saw it backed by a brass band filled
With the loved ones I lost

Grandpop Spence on Trumpet,
Grammy singing her heart out,
Droops on Tenor Sax, wicked smile on his face
Lauren at the front, marshal staff in hand
Adam keeping the steady beat with a few flourishes

The grave looked like the amber walls of my room
The dirt was well-trod wood below my feet
The coffin was my childhood bed, bookshelf left dusty
The cause of death was an acute apathy attack

The eulogy was delivered by Anthony
It was just a song, press play and let’s all move on
Winter falls and the falling snow no longer blinds but
Becomes the white mist of the world outside
You forget what it was like to look ahead

So instead you look back, you fall into yourself
What other distraction do you have
You unpack boxes that have never been opened
You find secrets you didn’t know you had
There’s a hidden room that just grew a door

When you open it, all that is in there is a shadow mirror
You see yourself and follows the ribbons of black thorns
They wind their way up your body and pierce your arms
Brambles breaking blood in tiny dots

The mirror becomes a window. You step through it.
Reflection no longer, dark twin no longer
You carry the shadow with you
It is small at first but its tendrils hold fast
Feed me, feed me, feed me

The shadow grows and grows until the thorns become vines
The roots become plants and the saplings become trees
You are the blackened tree left at the ruins of the burned out farmhouse
A reminder of what used to be here, left to rot and unable to see forward

The snow swirls around you, the white as thick and deep as the shadow
You step forward across a frozen lake, you know there is water beneath
No idea of which step will plunge you into the lake’s frozen depths
But you know that the ice is thin and you will fall. It’s just a matter of time.

Steak was overcooked
Snap Peas were bland
Soft and undercooked
When I came here before
The service was better too
The lighting reminds me
Of a high school production
Of Dracula, probably modern dress

Four years ago, Marco was here
I would walk in and see him
Smoking a cigarette near the alley
He would look at me with emptiness
The unyielding green of his eyes
Never giving anything away of
What was ticking away behind them

Do you know what happened to him?
One night I saw him back by the alley
I had a fine chardonnay and felt brave
I went to him and he looked at me
This time I could feel something
A heat a promise a need a certainty

Why do you always eat alone
The smoke flowed out of his nostrils
Dancing across his tightly closed lips
I’ve waited for friends but they would
Lie or be late or take a call or go
And I would be left alone for the night

Isn’t that lonely, to be alone
The alley had never seemed
So full of dark, inviting yet terrifying
I took a step towards him
He took a step towards me
I could taste his smoke on my tongue

When I opened my eyes
He had gone
If you can tell me where he went
I will stop showing up here
Did you have an employee named Marco

I just want to taste the promise of that night again.

Another penny in the jar
For slights left in the past
As the copper drops
Your shoulders straighten
Your feet hurt less
Your smile reaches higher
Almost crinkling your eyes

You put a penny in here
1 percent of your guilt is removed
You put 100 pennines in here
No guilt left in your aching bones

What do we even use pennies for
It actually costs more than a penny
To make a penny, copper is expansive
Guilt costs more than the sin ever did

It sits in your cupholder, getting coated
With the detritus of everyday life until
You brake too hard and you watch the guilt
Roll across the crumb-filled carpet

It comes to a stop, balancing on its side
You know it will fall and you’ll have to pick it up
Reaching down, your finger touch it but it moves
Out of reach, getting caught beneath the pedals

You are unable to drive until you get the penny
So now you’re on your hands and knees
Crawling into the trash coating the floor and
Hoping that this time, this time the guilt will stay
Trapped in the cupholder underneath the receipts of memory

I am not black. I am not white.
I exist between the two
I balance on a seesaw
That is heavily weighted
In one direction by society
And by my cultural choices

It didn’t used to bother me
I never lost sleep except
From late nights in green-grass yard
Hanging out with my white friends
I never worried about being stopped
And shot because I fit a description

It shows my privilege
This shelter of suburbia
There is an inability inside of me
To engage with my blackness
What does blackness even mean
To me

I have clear ideas of what blackness
Is, but these ideas are fueled by
Stereotypes, Music and Myths
I can’t trust my brain to speak
Truth about blackness

Am I supposed to feel a certain way?
Talk a certain way? Walk a certain way?
All I am is me, a swirling nova of gray
Amidst a world that want to sort me into
Night or Day.

What right do I have to speak about blackness?
I’m not sure I do. I feel like a house slave sometimes.
Society defines blackness with poverty, drugs, death,
Violence, the streets, death, gangs, death, prison, death
And all I see is what is shown to me, myth or fact
I don’t have the power to tell, I’m no god, I’m no king
I’m no mortal man, maybe I’m just another poser

No better than Al Jolson singing Mammy
No better than the catchers of Kunta Kinte
No better than someone who’s never seen Friday
No better than a poet rhyming a stanza
Because he thinks that is what a black person would say

For me, blackness is alien and unfamiliar
A butterfly brushing my nose in the twilight
But I think it’s a ghost, come to claim my soul
Take me back to the lawns of Suburbia
Where I can be white, supping on a diet of
Privilege, power and ignorance

I don’t know what the point of this was
Maybe to air out some of my anger
Alleviate my tired soul of the guilt
Tap into something different in me

I wonder if my blackness is a dead thing
Just a piece of my life that just sits in the corner
No one mention the corpse or point it out
Just sip the cider and talk about taxes

In shameful moments, I wonder
If my blackness is dead and
Is that such a bad thing

I’ve never been addicted to drugs,
Nothing chemical at least
I’ve been addicted to other things
KFC Potato Wedges with a side of Self-Doubt
Can’t forget the liter of Mountain Dew
A neon chaser of Melancholy
Makes it a lot easier to swallow
A bump of Anxiety and a hit of Depression
Just to even me out for the day
I would pick at the skin
Flaking away the reddened pad of my index finger
Looking around for my next fix
Someone would deal me a stare that took a little too long
Send me into a spiral of shame and self-esteem
I’d wake up on a corner, covered in my own fear
Hoping that I didn’t do anything to embarrass myself
But knowing that I definitely did
My friends would be there for me when I said I was ready to get clean
Ready to see a therapist, ready to drag myself out of the hole
But their support was useless the minute I heard that voice
You are worthless, every choice you’ve made is wrong
You only have yourself to blame, you will end up alone
No one loves you because you are scum
The devil speaking to me with silvered tongue
Saying the words to bring me crawling back for just
One
More
Taste
I’m better than I used to be
I talk more, I feel more
Nicorette gum in my pocket
For when I feel the need
I’ve heard that you never stop
Being an alcoholic, even if
You’ve been sober for years
I don’t know much about that
But I know about addiction

Religion can not make a bad man good
But it can give an excuse for evil deeds
Anyone can be hunted by the righteous
For immoral and dishonest reasons

Places of light fill up with darkness
The savage owl digs its talons in deeper
There is tearing claw scraping bone now
Can you hear it? The screech below the surface

Deuteronomy interwoven with the screech
Compassion sickened by the screech
Acceptance fractured by the screech
Love boiled into steam by the screech

Feel its insidious hold on faith
Its manipulation of decent people
A piece of forbidden knowledge
Known only to the nonbelievers

The Tree of Knowledge grows fat
From its rotted and bloated fruit
Worm-infested apples dropping
Like carpet bombs, exploding in Eden

Can you hear it? It’s always there
This is the screech, caressing you
Saying that you’re seeing
A man of God
Not Satan in his Sunday best

How did we become so lost?
We have lost the message
Now when we hear the screech
We see it as divine prophecy

There is no good left, just a mask
For the maggots to slither inside
Lay their eggs in the eyeholes
Send their grubs out to infest more

Religion can not make a good man bad
But it can twist his thoughts to make
Evil far more palatable, it can poison his
Ears with the screech and can ruin him

Do not look for good in the external
Stuff your ears with cotton
Hold your breath
Dive into yourself

There are depths there
There is clarity there
There is truth there
There you are

When you resurface,
You bring God with you
Fresh from the clay
Molded from the depths

Take God and carry them
Cradle their trembling body
Protect them with your heart-cage
For God will tell you who you are

Religion does not make you good or bad
It just enhances whatever lurks in you
Screech or Salvation?
Let’s find out.