Mom, why do they look at me differently?

Is it my eyes, mom is that why they look at me differently than others?

I try to blend in, I try not to look at them but they gaze at me differently.

She purses her lips quiet.

Is it the clothes I wear, I appreciate everything you buy me mom, but

Maybe if you would buy me better clothes they wouldn’t look at me that way.

Her fingers tremble so she stops chopping the apple with the butter knife.

Mom, maybe it’s the way I smell, I bathe every day and every night

I scrub myself until my skin nearly bleeds.  Mom answer me!

She leans over the kitchen counter looks up to the sky and sighs.

Mom mom! Maybe it’s the way I breathe. I have asthma.

Other kids have asthma too, but perhaps mine is different.

She reaches for a paper towel as she sniffles.

Maybe it’s the things I say. Maybe I say stupid things mom.

He tugs her dress. Is that why they look at me differently. Is it?!

No, that can’t be it, I don’t say anything to them anymore mom.

I keep my mouth completely quiet I don’t say a word. Mom! Mom!

She turns from him and buries her face in the paper towel.

Is it because they know that I still wet the bed? Did you tell them mom?

Mom!! Why would you tell them something like that! Mom, look at me!

She blows her nose, grabs another paper towel and takes a deep breath

Why are you crying mom?  They look at me the same way they look at you!

Do they look at me because of you, mom?!  Mom! It’s you isn’t it!

She takes away the paper towel, and lets the tears drip down her eyes.

It’s you mom! Why did you do this to me mom! WHY?!! I thought it was me…

Do you know how they stare at me? It’s like I’m not human mom? Why?!

She rests her right hand on his small shoulders; her arms trembling.

Don’t touch me mom?! I can’t stand the way they look at me mom.

Why mom! What did you do? What is it mom? Why did you do this to me!!

He buries his face in her bosom as he desperately pounds on her chest.

Oh my dear son she says.  I never wanted you to experience their eyes.

I’ve experienced those eyes my whole life.  And… it is my fault son.

She pulls him closer as he tries to push her off.

Please don’t fight me son!  I’m sorry! Dear god I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have let you been born into this.

I shouldn’t have let you go through the pain I went through because of their stares.

He cries out his tears into her chest as she holds him tighter.

I’m so sorry son.  One day we will die. They can’t stare at us when we are dead.

She squeezes him as his eyes close and the breath slowly leaves his lungs

They stare at us because of our skin she whispers in his ear.

They stare at us because of our ugly cursed black skin.

Soliloquy of the Eternal Negro

Take a look into my eyes,

Take a deep deep look,

A look so deep that the gaze causes you to drown away into my thoughts

I am much older than Katrina, and I am much older than riots in 1992 and 1965,

I am much older than eyes that closed that allowed a preacher to dream,

And I am much older than Malcolm Little when he knelt before Elijah Mohammad,

I’m so old that I can remember the Great Migration to the North, and, honestly, I was old then too

Because even though I was free to leave the South and go north, I vividly remember 1865 when I became free, period.

That was the day when I looked at my calloused hands blistered with the hulls of the cotton which I picked for centuries,

And, I clenched my fist and let the blood drip from my palms to unpicked cotton below and cried to God that I would Never Ever be a slave again!

To this day, I’ll never know if he heard me;

I’ll never even know if he was my God, or just the oppressors who I once called “Massah”

Honestly, I don’t remember who my God was, I don’t even remember my name, or where I came from

I lost that all when they chained me to that damned ship and brought me here

For 3 months I lay in whirling darkness, envying the humanity given to rats and roaches

Fearing them too, as they gnawed at the dead and ate our handcuffed emaciated flesh

I lost my sons and daughters, my nieces and nephews, my mother and father and friends in that hell

Those who didn’t die were thrown overboard to lessen the load of the ship

Thrown overboard like dirty rags, thrown overboard like helpless dirty rags

Their screams still haunt me so much that my eyes forever became cold

You see, beneath this nappy hair, big lips, and dark skin, I am over 400 years old

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  Black don’t crack.

We do, you don’t believe me? Take a look at the whip marks on my back.

Then take a look at the bone protruding from my ankle where they chained me,

Take a look at my limping knee where over 30 times they clubbed me

Or pass me a tissue, and I’ll cough up the blood from generations of beatings

I crack.  I bruise. I cry. I feel pain.  And, at times I’ve wished I was dead

I’m human.  It still brings me to tears to say that.

Nothing about my life has been humane.

I remember 1776 like it was just yesterday. 

I fought in that war; I fought for the freedom of the United States.

I fought because the truth was “self evident” that all men are created equal.

Little did I know, I was only 3/5ths of that man.

I gave my life to fight for the freedom for what?

At the end, I was more of a slave then I was before.

When that revolutionary war ended, I basked in the glorious sun and extended my arm in hope of being called equal

But, in my extended hand they placed a shovel and told me to dig

The once glorious sun then beat on me causing beads of sweat to drop from my body like daggers,

Its beating only matched when they mercilessly whipped me for digging the coarse tundra too slowly

And they called me a word that to this very day sends shudders from my spine down to the earth below so much so that I lose my balance and can hardly stand when I hear it.

Nigger.

Weeping as the dripping sweat caused my fresh foot long wounds to burn

And blood-curdingly screaming, I gripped the ragged shovel as they poured salt on my wounds

I cried, “Why must I dig massah! MASSAH! Why!”

“To bury your hopes and dreams, nigger.” He replied with a menacing cackle,

“To bury your hopes and dreams.”

I hadn’t dreamed since the slave ship, and I lost hope after that day too.

Whatever hope I had left boomed from my bowels like a benediction,

 The hope that that Sweet Chariot would swing low and carry me home.

Or the hope to “Keep my hand on the plow”

Amidst my hollow hymns, I fathered thousands of children.

Some were my own blood, and they hated me for being cursed with my hands

Others were the seeds of my daughter’s rape; they hated me because they had the hands of my Massah

Cursing me, spitting at me, throwing rocks at me because they hated the fact

That one drop of “me” made them ME!

And that no matter how much perm, presses, peroxide or bleach they pampered on themselves

That even after the Civil War; they would never be able to escape ME!

I’ve been free for over 150 years now. 

Ha, some freedom if you ask me.

They promised me 40 acres and a mule,

But instead they gave me black codes, Plessy, and Jim Crow.

Before they cut off my tongue in slavery when I tried to read like them,

Now they cut off the funding for my school so I’ll never read like them.

I finally got my sons and daughters to rally with me like panthers

We united to lift ourselves from the pits of despair

Rallying behind Huey Newton and Bobby Seale

We wore black to symbolize our new-found pride in black.

And, it ended blackly, as they sent discord to rip through our chords

Once proud black, now stained with crippled blue and bloody red

And crack rock contraband sprinkled in the middle

So that my sons face life imprisonment

So, their sons and daughters don’t know them

And, once again, they don’t know me.

I fought in wars and was put in the front line to die

Considered “expendable”, my operation was suicide

I’ve fought in every war and every major battle for this nation

I fought as a slave, I fought as a segregated man, and I still fight

Instead of segregation, now I fight because socioeconomics leaves me at the bottom

I tried to climb up the totem pole.

I climbed day and night for over 20 years.

As I climbed, my slave clothes were replaced with business suits.

And when I slept, the wind whispered into my ears to be like them.

When I got to the top of the pole, so high above the clouds that I could hardly stand

I looked down through binoculars to my daughters and sons hungry jaws

They were eager to climb up like I had

I threw down a rope, to try to pull up my daughters and sons

The rope was torn to shreds; they called my action too affirmative

The pole was then covered in slime pasted in crack rock.

My daughters and sons try to climb, but they didn’t get high up the pole

They only got high, so the earth shook beneath them and they fell further into a pit.

Now, I struggle to even get them back to where they were before.

I’ve lived for over 400 years and I’ve seen it all.

I’ve drowned in my own thoughts, and brought myself back to life.

My dreams have been shattered like porcelain dropped from a tower

And my hope has been chopped up like thousands of fiery spores blowing ashes away in the wind

Yet, I continue to breathe in the air through my lungs and move forward.

From slavery, to black codes, from segregation, to Jim Crow,

From black panthers to crips, from being shipped in chains to being slashed by whips

Through it all, I rise.  Like the sun after dusk, I rise.

Like a single blossom, bathed in the waters of spring, I rise.

And like the clenched fist I throw up in the air, bearing the hope of my generation,

I WILL RISE.

I WILL RISE!