Afraid to know me-rejj ©

I was just doing some revisions on this season of poems and I think I'm done with this one...as slammed during slam 4...well at least for now. I don't know that I am ever really finished, but here it is.

You ask me why I’m so angry?
Why we can’t discuss this
quietly, politely, over cookies and tea
or have a nice public discourse
in a “safe space”
where you can sing kumbaya
and have your little Q and A
ask me to talk about racism today
first I prove to you its real,
then you get to decide
how I’m SUPPOSED to feel
and put a volume control on how loud
I can raise my voice.
Well the rumor is
America is all about freedom of choice,
so I’m saying NO.
No, I’m saying fuck you
God bless Barak for his patience,
but as for me I’m through.

You see, America is never my safe space
You say turn the other cheek
but I only have one face
one heart
one mind
one body
one spirit
divided into this double consciousness
that allows me to know you intimately
Wheras you never catch onto my complexity
You can’t “help” me
and I could help you,
but we all know how Thanksgiving ended
Perhaps some gifts are best left ungiven
and that’s how it feels
like I am the greatest gift never offered
never taken
my spirit of unity
the dream cyclically deferred
potential continuously ignored
abhorred


You claim you wanna know me,
but only in February
FUCK your 28 days
29 in a leap year
You say you wanna know me,
but I only smell your fear
the same thing they smelled
Right before the genocide
or the homicide
when a cop decides
a black man armed with a pen
should be shot 40 times

Save the hallmark moment
I’ve heard all about King’s dream
but the reality
is a lack of humanity
coupled with injustice
that kills any chance of racial harmony
Its 2008
Why do nooses STILL swing from southern trees?

You say I have no right to be angry
When in lew of reparations
you demand
that I concede my history
pretend your victory didn’t involve destroying me
so you can sleep guilt free

Or if it gets too hard, just kill me again
then split me open
from nape to navel
assuming you can learn everything you need to know about me
from the autopsy
white latex hands
probing from the inside
you take what isn’t given
ask the dead for the forgiveness
for fear you won’t get it from the living

You split me open
to never know me
to unmake the memories
of everything you say never happened…
to see the shape of my guts
the soft fleshy pinks
of the parts of us that look the same,
don’t worry, we’re not the same.
The difference
was never our physiology,
but rather the lives we choose to lead

I dare to seek my answers among the living
split loaves of bread
in communion with those among me
who would share
their humanity

Split my corpse,
but you can never split my soul
into two neat halves,
a pomegranate
all the bits of me
parceled in tiny crimson seeds
to be fished out with a spoon
and displayed in a glass bowl.

No. It’s just not that easy
To know me,
is to know
and engage with the reality of
the whole and living being.