I enjoy staring into the divine
and listening to the empty spaces of time,
fossilized under the ash of ages.

Valleys full of silver and gold
a world to innocent
and old.

I've tried to convey my fears,
afraid of how the future will feel-
will that word "feel" be extinct like a High culture from antiquity?

Will feeling be past its prime?
perhaps only in mine.

We’ve mastered the vast oceans,
we’ve conquered the open skies,
we’ve dominated life itself.

We are our gods;
our grasp will soon reach even the stars—
humanity is victorious.

It is amusing though, of all things we have achieved,
we still are burdened with hatred and deceit.

We still imagine ourselves as queens and kings,
amongst lesser beings.

We practice prejudice, we as a society hate equality.
We are still afraid of what we cannot comprehend.

Before we subdue the stars, can we at least quell our hearts?

“I am the descendant of survivors,” I think as I reflect on the lynching trees.
I think of the pain, fear, and cautiousness that my ancestors experienced in their lifetimes.
The normalcy of it.
I think of how far we’ve come.
As a nation: one inch.
As my brothers’ and sisters’ force: eons.
There is so much pride I feel in their transcendence. I am here because they learned how to survive.
I wonder was it through power? Cowardice? Hiding?
How much does it matter? Isn’t there strength in whatever method works?
There are so many generations that did not make it. I am one of the lucky ones.
I get to live out the dreams that my ancestors cried out to the stars,
The ones they whispered into the void of a tunnel lit by a single flickering light,
The ones they inhaled from a friend after they bubbled up to the water’s surface,
The ones that danced in the breeze like the leaves on hanging trees.
I have the honor.
I have the pride of knowing they survived fear and turmoil for me.
The past is dark and grim, but the future is bright because now I hold the light.
Sometimes when people ask me what it means to be African-American, I tell them
It means to be lost.
Displaced from your real home; tribe; ripped from your roots --
But does it?
When I look up at the stars that may have guided generations of them,
Sometimes I feel as if I can see some of them blinking
Watching over me.

FROM MOZAMBIQUE TO SOUTH AFRICA AND THE STRUGGLE IN BETWEEN
from Mozambique to the belly of the queen mother Afrika,
we were born soldiers, strangled from the arms of our mothers,
strangers to our engraved fathers in their early graves,
starve and strive in the command of our commanders,climb
and fall hills of many mountains, with countless bodies i carried
in my arms, moved from one camp to another, with blood of my
comrades fled in the river, as crocodiles tumble and roles with
them, they scream and cried while we crossed to south Africa.
a refuge toe to giant Afrika our queen mother, this has become
our home too, regardless of the chaos we've rendered. i know no
memories but nightmare in the surface of Mozambique, they see the beauty of its minerals and crops, the tremendous sea and scattered
informal settlement for farming left by my people to south
Africa, but in true essence i see graves, grenades, and guns
buried in the bodies of my comrades from Mozambique to
south Africa and the struggle in between

New era, Bravely Big Blue, and Recently Ready Red. Fear comes next, of man. A Boogie man. As the Boogie MAN had announced that they would create their own demise. His tactic? Using the very ideologies that they held dear to make a weapon that comes close to destroying their own ideology. Exploiting difference. Saying that others beliefs would spread and make it so that they could no longer play nice. Cat and mouse. The startup and the Puppeteer. Raced now. Not only in weapons, but in their smarts. They tried to be smarter than the other as a way to one up the other. As that would teach them a lesson. A global, dangerous and very childish game of chicken. Trying their hardest to be better in every conceivable way. But striving too close to the sun caused one break. And the other irreversibly down the path of Ethical Egoism and Horrible fighting. Skirmishes and war of the Color thoughts. A color preference, how to color your thinking. The patriotic Blue, and the developing Red. Blue hated red. Blue and red look bad together. They’re such different colors. Different enough colors to fight in an array of places, each. A jungle, and a peninsula. Sad fights for the colors. Good people fighting for colors. Brave people. They fought to paint the world their color. It wasn’t impossible; red and blue took out their violent Black and red neighbor. That was different after though. Black and red, two color division. Division, like the land of the used to be black and red. Separate, the and bordering the two, sadly fitting. One side colored Red and the other Blue. Say to color other worlds their color, and to rain terror and fear. An explosive with a horrible temper, childish colors. Blue didn’t play nice with theirs. Sad, I am sad now. Summing up literal people’s deaths with a **** color analogy seems disrespectful. But I hope to show that the colors were so clear and each feared the other. Having their color pollute the globe and **** others. Having them create a place where no color would exist. Duck and cover, their philosophy if the other color wanted to teach a permanent, self-harming deadly lesson. Blue was free, and Red strong. But after fighting monsters so huge who knew how it could have turned out. I’m just happy I have an internet connection and a nice home. My life was changed by brawls of colors, and it still is. Somebody else has adopted a different hue of red this time though….

We all got stories.
Stories are life's language;
language impacts perception - our
own, others, and nations.
"Stories dispossess, stories malign,
stories empower, stories humanize,
stories rob and break dignity,
stories repair whats broken..."
Single stories are scanty.
All stories, stitched together,
complete the composition of you.
Many stories matter - yours.
If your life were a book,
what would people read about?
We all got stories.
Share them. All of them.
[they MATTER]