Poem: Woke Up Black

I'm not really a poet. But sometimes, I pretend that I am. Here's a piece that I wrote about a year ago when I was feeling myself.

I woke up Black this morning and it made my soul smile

Just as I was having my morning tea

It occurred to me that, coded in my melanin,

I must do something with this-

Waking up Black

It ain't something you take for granted.

It ain't something you shortchange

It ain't a game so playing with it ain't it

This waking up Black

Got legacy running through it like Mississippi water

It's got fire from the gods running through it

It's got them people from antiquity

I see traces of them on me

Cause I wonder about the origin of these hips.

This waking up Black got

Them people from the recent past and

Them people that's up in here now, looking at me as

I look like them and they waiting

Waitin' for me to see me as myself,  smelling like earthly purpose while

Asking the Great I Am who am I with answers

Arriving on the wings of cherubims while my cloud of witnesses rejoice

This waking up Black got

A calling at the crossroads

One way, it's more Black pain with nothing to gain and

It's a straight trip to the well water of victimhood and desolation

The other way got cracks, and dips and holes and curves and hills and detours,

Weary will be the constant but along the way,

Elixirs of healing flow endlessly into chalices with my name etched in gold.

This waking up Black got an assignment of Love; a Love as simple as cotton sheets

Blowing in the southern breeze on clotheslines in country backyards

But as rich and deep and everlasting as that one strand of Black Mother DNA. 

It rights all the wrongs. Sings the most sacred of songs with a touch gentle like a lover's hand

But a command as strong as hurricane winds churning in the graveyard sea of the Atlantic.

I am immersed in the fullness of every Black gift I carry in this being of mine.

I intend to die empty.

So, yes, I woke up Black this morning and it made my soul smile.