Vanessa German: Laughter and Blackness

It is not like i am ashamed of my sorrow. or even ashamed of my rage. i am rage. i am outrage. i am the blues. i am blue. i blue. it’s jus that sometimes i be goin on about my business which be a whole lotta runnin up n down the street. a whole lotta where are you who with you where you gotta be. and then ignoring things. and then it is like a slow tide comin in. like rip tide and then alla the sudden i am not where i thot i waz and my summer make-up don’t look right on my face and i sit in crowds of people and i do not smile no more. dats how it is sometimes. sneaky beast. and i tell you. i be rollin wit it deep sometimes. i mean what between the sorrow and the rage. between considering blood war and being kicked offa a wine train cuz a laughter n blackness. well there are sometimes. someone say some wild shit to me. like that one time in east liberty–which ought to jus go on ahead and strip the liberty from its title– at that restaurant and that girl at the door tell me sorry restrooms for customers only. or like. how they be askin fo my id at the museum. but only me. or like the look on the paramedics face when we was all down on the ground. yellin. he still breathin he still breathin. n might as well have been singing the opening shout to the lion king for all it meant. there are so many messes. and sometimes the accumulation of them. comes upon me in one horrible moment. i think to myself. i will have to kill you before you kill me. or even worse i will have to go off the balcony now. i will have to find a good high edge and leap from it. or set a thing on fire. or cut at my arms n thighs. n how much energy to resist. hurting one’s own self. how much energy to keep from eating yoself into fructose stupor. how much energy to place someone else’s racist maniacal psychosis into a justifiable framework — before you become fodder for someones cell phone camera. a scrape on a boot of a highway patrolman. or worse an apathetic mystery like sandra bland. or another one of those 60,000 missing black women in america. so yeah. i work hard to keep myself alive and out of jail. even the dali lama prays for me.

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Copyright 2015 Vanessa German