Inspired

I Have To Dream

I rose from slumber

To see a young black male

Standing broken before me.

Our hearts connected.

He was in turmoil and beaten badly.

His body was covered in cuts and bruises.

I saw the hand prints swollen into his face.

I imagined the white supremacists’ onslaught of hatred.

I saw the open oozing gouges on his arms and legs.

The dogs that attacked him for marching were real to me.

I saw the shame in his eyes that the system had instilled.

Then I rose to embrace him in my strong arms.

I rose to shelter and protect him from the outsiders that sought to destroy him.

His weary eyes grew wide with horror.

He tried to shrink back despite the pain of movement,

Only to be restricted by chains;

Bindings that secured him to my very own ankles.

My heart bled with confusion.

 I couldn’t comprehend the situation.

Why would this broken youth

Resist the love I was meant to give?

I was just having a dream confirming that

I am a Strong Black Woman.

Immediately I was flooded with the anger of rejection.

My mighty voice defied sound barriers as I questioned him.

“How dare you not see that I want what’s best for you?”

His ears, unable to withstand yet another assault,

Hemorrhaged as his face contorted from the excruciating circumstances.

The conundrum at hand startled my perceptions as I

Struggled to back up in repulsion from the hideous contortions of his body.

The forgotten links around my ankles drug his inflicted body across the floor.

I stumbled at his weight heavily countering my progression of retreat.

My every action was creating more injuries and intensifying those that already existed.

Tears began to fling themselves suicidally from my eyes, escaping my thoughts.

The boy recognized my pain and  pushed thru his own to offer comfort.

As he reached to brush my tears from my cheeks, they burned him like acid.

My eyes emitted lasers that cut through him down to his very soul.

I am a Strong Black Woman; how dare he only recognize me in my weakness.

He is afraid of my strength and only attracted to my vulnerabilities.

I finally addressed him with a question only he could answer.

“What is wrong with you?”

I could have never readied my spirit for his response.

He bowed as deeply as possible, considering his battered body.

He acknowledged me with the utmost respect out of fear.

His honor for me was grown from the seeds of tyranny and abuse.

“I do not know what is wrong with me my Queen.

From birth you told me that I was just like him;

That bastard that knocked you up the same time as my sister’s mother;

That low down dirty dog that did nothing but drink, smoke and fuck.

You spat venom at my core as I grew into his image; an abomination in your sight.

You continually raised me to realize that Strong Black Women are independent.

They don’t need men like me to come in and screw up their lives.

I learned that no man that looks like me is ever really about his business.

You expected me to fail and be just like the others, then berated me for living up to your expectations.

You fed me the script to follow, then chastised me for falling in line.

All the while you screamed that you loved me and didn’t understand what was wrong with me.

“If you look closely at the fist marks, that is your ring imprinted within.

That happened when I brought you my dreams and you smiled in my face.

That memory was erased when I heard you say that black men ain’t shit.

How could I live to be on top when you said I couldn’t even be feces?

The claw marks on my extremities match your one inch acrylic tipped nails.

Flip your hand over and gaze at my flesh rotting beneath them.

When I tried to branch out on my own, you impaled me and again

You reminded me that I was like the sperm donor, one who abandons.

I wanted to go out and get something to replenish you in your brokenness.

Your mistrust of men like me caused you to rip into my skin even deeper.

I was kept a prisoner of your watchful eye, only serving as a whipping boy to your ideals.

Your black love beat me down at home and in public.

The strength from my Strong Black Woman was made evident in my scars.”

He paused in emotion and steadied himself for my outrage to overcome him again.

Memories flooded back to me; the beatings, verbal, mental, spiritual.

This was my baby boy, my creation; this was my legacy laying damaged at my feet.

He was impossibly bound to me, awaiting death with no hope of life.

I had single handedly created and destroyed, heaping the blame on them;

When all his life he had never left my side, begging for true acceptance.

I told him what was right, and then showed him what was truth.

I glanced in the full length mirror that captured both of our beings.

I was a looming presence with scars that matched his blow for blow.

He was a haphazard mound of flesh, barely recognizable as human.

This reality was too painful to live in and take in so I

Turned the mirror to only reflect the shiny side of my armor.

I released my battle cry, “I am a Strong Black Woman,”

And returned to my slumber where I could walk beside a Strong Black King.

Copyright © 2010 Natasha Guy