Pen and Paper: Wake the Fuck Up

Wake the fuck up

You know
I don't like to use these type of words
But sometimes you just have to
Get people’s attention so
Wake the fuck up

And open your eyes
There’s a whole lot of shit going down
And I don't want you to be surprised

By the death of affirmative action
Wrapped up in time for Christmas
And the wall at or border
Those little men are defending

Put down your books and take a break
And look around on what’s at stake

Look at the faces wlking aound
Just how many you see  are brown
Yellow, pink, and white,
I bet you’ll find the proportions aren’t right

Take walk into the city
And look into the eyes of many
Whom sleep on the streets wrapped in old
dreams
Cups rattling in the cold
Hungry and broken
And all they ask for is a token
A modicum of respect nd recognition

I hope by now you see my mission

Wake the fuck up
It makes me so mad
I  cant breathe
And choke on rage
And self-loathing

You see I’m not speaking to you
At least not just you but
Myself too
The one who
Sits and waits for someone else
To pick up the banner and
Fight the great cause for their sake

Just wait just a second while I pause
And reflect on  a world were man live alone
driven by greed
desire for fame

a world twisted and crumbling in the
the annals of he time
home to forked tongues and sheep
who are lulled by the promise of pipe dreams

i am mad as hell at
the people whom ignore the
suffering of the people living next door
at injustice and hate
and those who try and placate me by saying
that's the way it’s gotta be

fuck that and fuck them
who would lull and lie
to hide and trick you from the side
whispering sweet songs
sirens of the right
ignorant motherfuckers who are just trying to get by

getting by aint good enough
getting by isn’t right

and if you try and tell me otherwise
you're a mother fucking lie

You Know These Things Just Happen

The world is not always a place of peace and plenty. Despite our technological advances, our intellectual prowess, and our thirst for justice and equality, the world can still be a pretty fucked up place. For the most part when bad things happen, we have a desire to distance ourselves from the traumatic experience in order to either process it or to suppress it. What is more distressing, however, is when someone else intervenes not to liberate us but to further silence us in our trauma. How often have you heard the phrases “you know these things just happen” or “it was just a misunderstanding” knowing full well that there was no misunderstanding or happenstance, but intentions deep and dark. But what happens, when the hand in the night full of dark intentions belongs to someone you know? Ntozake Shange’s seminal work for colored girl’s who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf explores this very notion and how it pertains to the rape of women of color.

The lady in red tells us:

a rapist is always to be a stranger
to be legitimate
someone you never saw
a man wit obvious problems¹

Or so we are thought. The truth however is quite different. According to surveys conducted by the Bureau of Justice, 38% of victims were raped by a friend or acquaintance, 28% by "an intimate" and 7% by another relative, and 26% were committed by a stranger to the victim. About four out of ten sexual assaults take place at the victim's own home. Though not an insignificant number, only ¼ of reported rape cases were perpetrated by a stranger. In the remaining 75% of reported cases the victim knew their attacker.²

75%.

SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT.

Let that number sit with you.

What is more staggering is that these numbers only reflect the number of reported cases of rape. In the United States alone, 60% of instances of rape go unreported. Out of those cases that are reported only 50.8% of them end in arrest and only 58% percent of those cases that make it to trial end in conviction. Nearly ⅓ of those individuals convicted of rape avoid facing any jail time. When you factor in under-reporting, the inherent difficulties of prosecution, and the number of individuals who avoid jail time you wind up with only 16% of the reported 40% of cases of rape ending with conviction and time served.

In another light, only 6% of all instances of rape actually with the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of the perpetrator.

Going back to Shange’s work, we are given a little insight into why so few cases make it to trial in the first place:

if you’ve been seen in public wit him
danced one dance
kissed him good-bye lightly

wit closed mouth

pressin charges will be as hard
as keepin yr legs closed
while five fools try to run a train on you³

For women (and men) who fall victim to sexual predators who wear the mask of friendship can often be as devastating an ordeal as the rape itself. It is a violation of both body and spirit, of trust and faith, that is hard to face. Many victims retreat or are forced to believe the lies of “if you know him / you must have wanted it” or “are you sure you didnt suggest” or the accusatory “hd you been drinking.” Comments and questions designed to induce shame.4
Shange tells us otherwise and reveals the sleight of hand that is taking place. Though her work was written in 1975, her words sadly still ring true. “...it turns out the nature of rape has changed/ we can now meet them in circles we frequent for companionship/ we see them at the coffeehouse/ wit someone else we know/ we cd even have em over for dinner/ & get raped in our own houses/ by invitation...”5
Fortunately, every story need not end in sorrow and grief. Though Shange reveals an ugly truth about our world she does not allow the darkness to go unchallenged. Instead she gifts us with a tale that builds a rainbow from the darkness for those who been dead so long, closed in silence so long, they don’t know the sound of their own voices, infinitely beautiful. We invite you to walk out of the darkness and to cross the rainbow and see what light exists on the other side.

Peace,
I.M.

Also, check me out at Colored People Theater aka CPT. 
____________________________________

1. Ntozoke Shange, for colored girls who have contemplated suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. 1st Collier Books ed (New York, NY: Scribner Poetry, 1997) 17.
2. “The Offenders: Rape Isn’t A Masked Stranger,” RAINN, 31 May 2011 .

3. Ntozoke Shange, for colored girls who have contemplated suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. 1st Collier Books ed (New York, NY: Scribner Poetry, 1997) 18.

4. Ibid, 17.

5. Ibid, 19.

Silent Deaths and Resounding Resurrections

I was recently reflecting on a speech by Audre Lorde  entitled "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.  In it Lorde states:

I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself.  My silences had not protected me.  Your silence will not protect you.  But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.  And it was the concern and caring of all those women which gave me strength and enabled me to scrutinize the essentials of my living.

What are the words you do not yet have?  What do you need to say?  What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?  Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears.  Because I am woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself - a Black woman warrior poet doing my work - come to ask you, are you doing yours?

A bold and beautiful woman who I am sorry I never met.  Like many, I started the new year in heavy reflection on my life.  The choices I have made and those I have avoided.  The last two years I have been running through the motions in some respects and I can't help but cringe at Lorde's final question  "are you doing yours?" because I am afraid my answer may be no.  The great thing about life though is that we may not be promised tomorrow but we have today, right now, to stop living lives of silence and to make a little noise. 

Pottery for Dummies

In times of crisis, we often first look for support in the wrong places.  We turn outward instead of inward; to the faces of friends and lovers; the ties of kith and kin.  The truth is that me must love ourselves first and foremost before we can truly be happy and have that love reciprocated. I had forgotten that of late and was given a pretty painful reminder today. 

Most people who know me have only glimpsed at one of many masks.  That is not to say the faces they see are not real, that they are an act of illusion.  The truth is more complicated than that and cannot be summarized by a simple metaphor.  I am broken and wear the masks to cover the missing pieces., each mask revealing and concealing but a portion of the whole of who I am. 

This week I was reminded that there are still holes that leak when I am overwhelmed and threaten to shatter the vessel of my life.  I was so busy looking for hands to hold the pieces together, I forgot who it was that had first reassembled the shattered piece of my soul. Me.

It was not easy and I was reminded that it is a process yet unfinished, but I gathered the shards unto myself and it was my hands that held them in safekeeping. Now I know a few people who would probably take exception to this statement and would remind me that my hands may have held the shape but it was them that served as the glue the allowed me a few moment of respite.  I have not forgotten and this is not to say that those who have been there for me mean nothing, quite the opposite in fact.  But, it is time for me to hold myself together for a while.  It is time for my hands to relearn the shape of my life and perhaps to redirect it. I am thankful for the support, but it is time for me to stop covering the holes in my life and to simply remove them.

My vessel was broken and I tried to recapture its shape, perhaps it is time for a new form to emerge.

(I said that the truth can’t be reduced to simple metaphor, but I didn’t say I would try to do it anyway.  I am a poet and metaphor is how I interpret the world….sue me.)

Peace.

Mercutio