Of Storied Memories
Standing here in the mind of mine
passing through and over time
pulling out thoughts sublime:
sorrow, hate, pain, joy, love, sanity--
all the mould character of my humanity;
On the outside, my African character is evident
despite the imprinted middle passage incident,
and on the inside, I'm American born and bred...
child of the black bent backs of the ancestral dead...
still here in the land of the other misnamed: called red;
Memories are like a flowing meadow's storied river;
meandering, undulating, and splashing out to sea,
seeking to reunite with and become one with the Giver
who moulded us all...making you and creating me.
N*****, slave, coloured, *****, African-American,
is what they chose then and now to call mine and me
but like the river flowing to the sea, I'll decide who to be
here in the land of the Brave, I'll be an Ameri-African man;
not your beast of burden slave—sweat and blood for the land.
Africa is...America is...and I am of no need
of an explanation;
standing in the life-long memories of the nature
of my exploitation,
and realizing I no longer need to be a footnote*
in his story
but a complete sentence in the boldface truth
of our story!
*Imagine this for me: if I was them and they were us and I did to them what they did to us, would that not be reciprocity from the tinted true tribe of the exodus?
Copyright © Millard Lowe | Year Posted 2019
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