Resting

I understand your dilemma -
to comment or not to comment.

A girl walks by
completely un-phased by your attention,

and you want recognition for your effort,
so you put on your shining armor

and resuscitate chivalry with the one statement
that boils her blood -

"You too pretty to be so mean, sweetheart."

Actually...

I'm not mean,

I'm thinking.

Not about anything particularly,
but everything simultaneously. 

That's what happens when I'm left to my own devices.

I'm Alice
tumbling down the rabbit hole,

grabbing at bubbling elixirs
on my way to the hatter's tea party.
Every possibility in the world is open to me,
and I'm happy
hurling through mind space,
no regard for anything
but wonderland.

I grow and shrink at my own whim,
a warrior and a wee one
whenever I please,
all to rejuvenate my spirit,
heaps more than your eyes
or comments ever could.

You see me walking,
but I'm on a journey
for which a smile is not required.

Besides...
Don't you know it's the smiles you can't trust?
Resting bitch is the world's last sincere expression.
That's a personality with layers,

each one rich and spilling over into the next.

Meaningful...not mean,

guess my pretty just takes more effort to be seen.

In Memoriam (for my niece and her new baby)

My brother was killed when hashtags were pound signs,

so there was no online outrage,

none offline either…

He just got shot.

A black finger pulled the trigger

and nobody did anything “constructive”

but put his face on a goddamn t-shirt

that I’ve been wearing (once a week)

for the last 18 years.

You see…I’ve known that Black lives matter for some time now.

I didn’t expect a march or anything…

I got it.

He was nothing special –

no innocent juvenile face to splatter across the news,

Al Sharpton would never speak on his behalf.

In fact, we were halves –

different moms,

same fatal father though,

junkie blood coursing through our veins making us both sick.

At some point he got a girl pregnant

and didn’t marry her,

at another he moved dope to support the baby,

no surprise that no one batted an eye when they saw

Twenty-four…Black…Male…Homicide…

Guess a bullet was the only cure for his social disease.

Guess that’s why no one panicked.

Guess that’s why I can’t get with this new movement.

I panicked 18 years ago,

When the phone rang during the “bad-news” hours

and I had to take a trip uptown

to see roses haphazardly thrown on the pavement where his body fell,

and my DNA daddy hung his head

and acted as if he ever gave more of a damn about either of us

than he did his drugs and women.

I panicked cause I knew no one thought about my niece enough

to work to change the direction of yet another fatherless girl.

When I realized the rest of her life

would be littered with lies

about a man she was too young to know,

but would always wonder about.

And how can any of us girls ever have

a fighting chance to change our stars

unless we know and accept the truth about our daddies.

I panicked when I accepted the truth about mine…

When I realized the best and worst of him war in me,

And that I walk a tightrope between revolutionary and reject

when I stand in front of children and tell them

to forgive their parents everyday

because they did the best with what they had.

When I insist they focus on the future

because that’s all they can really own,

and all they can ask me is how much I money I make.

Keep your hashtag heroes

and other online bullshit.

I haven’t been able to breath for 18 years.

My hands have been up in surrender for 34.

And unless you’re prepared to live your protest,

your hashtag might as well be another goddamn t-shirt

with a nondescript face,

sunrise and sunset dates too close together,

passed out to the family in memory

of the lives we put on the back burner for 140 characters of self-righteousness