Not Much longer-a rejj poem ©

It’s like I’m stuck in
that Salvador Dali painting
where time is melting away
in the endless wastelands,
but the desert is my job
and I am so thirsty
for a sip of meaning
my lips are cracked and bleeding

Here every silence
every un-sighed sigh
and fake smile
seconds before
I hear myself saying
‘yes sir’
is me
losing ground,
losing grace,
losing integrity,
always
Losing

While inside
I HEAR HER,
clawing
kicking,
and cussing
MAD AS HELL.
She’s banging on the walls.
She’s painting signs and writing letters.
She’s building a bomb and stock piling stones
and plotting The Revolution.
Red war paint streaks her cheeks and
she’s got a bullhorn
and she’s screaming at the top of her lungs
‘DON’T DO THIS TO ME! I HAVE RIGHTS!’
‘Shhhhh.’ I say. ‘I’ve got bills.’
I button up my collar,
push my hair down a little,
shine up my shoes
all respectable like
and slide on the mask
‘I’ve got responsibilities,’ I tell her.

I lock her in tight before I go to
that place.
She’s got to stay there,
her and her neck rolling,
loud talking,
truth tellin’ ass.
She’s got to stay inside,
so I make the walls extra thick,
mix my own concrete
with every reason
freedom isn’t free

Aren’t we all
share cropping for a percentage
of our liberty
to be paid out
in small increments
over time

We turn ourselves into seed
take the broken pieces
and bury them in soil
trying to pretend
it’s enough to
have medical and dental

But she won’t pretend with me.
She is my loud ass
Jiminy Cricket
She’s yelling:
‘You don’t know what you’re doing!’
but I know (I know)
‘That’s my soul,’ she tells me.
‘MY SOUL, getting torn apart daily
by murderous eagles and it’s not regenerating!
Is it too much to want a little fire?
I never took what wasn’t already mine.
But you, you just give it all away.’

We both know what she wants…
She wants to travel the world
with Jimmy’s band of gypsies
She wants to eat wild strawberries
still warm from the summer sun
She wants to take body shots of tequila
off the abs of a pro-wrestler
She wants to join the circus
and have sex on a trapeze
wearing nothing but pink sequined pasties
and a grin to beat the band,
She wants freedom.
but I can’t give it to her,
then who would pay my student loan?

So I go to
that place
and grin and lie
and let the best of me
rot in a cell
in the bottom of my heart
And when it isn’t enough,
this daily act of subservience
Mr. Man remembers to put me in my place
And in these
‘get me some coffee,’
moments of condescension
where I am not my degrees
or my experience
but rather
a young black face
getting ground up
in the combine
that tills the fields
planting the next generation
of white supremacist patriarchy

Mr Man says:
‘Hey, nothing personal.’
He says: ‘It’s nothing personal’
as he wipes his shoes
on the ruins of my dignity.
When to me
it is so deeply personal
being complicit in my own
capture and enslavement

In these moments
I hear her crying,
her voice grows dim,
arms tired of flailing,
spirit tired of fighting
she shrinks a little more
a cotton voodoo doll
in scalding water
But every tear is like the tide rising
There are cracks in the foundation
of the prison that binds us both.
And freedom is coming…..