Dear Black Girl

I am Sorry

That from girlhood you are not
taught to see

The Beauty in Ebony

Or to realize that the stars are
only seen

With the inkiest skies

And by Year One

You are tucked into a Guerilla
Warfare.

How to avoid jests
From the best of fair critics

Calling the bluff at your skin tone.

How your Lips are some what large
And how your career is in shaking your *** on TV 5 years to come.

How you have to be compared with the lighter skinned girls

Or how you stared many times at the bleaching cream

BUT "YOU ARE PRETTY FOR A BLACK GIRL"

Don't let them define you by the melanin
The one in your Skin

Cos you don't have to be a ******

To make Heaven.
So by your teenage years

You feel you are the PLAN B

of the Black Kings

They only plan to *** you

And leave you
YOU ARE BLACK

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL

So smile

Hold your head up high

Like they say

Black Don't Crack.

They said your name on the announcements this morning, but you weren't around to hear it.  
They spoke it just like anyone else would, but the tone they had was all wrong.  
The curves in the letters of your name -much like the curves of your hourglass figure- did not drip off the announcer's tongue like they should have.  
They were summoned from the front of their brain rather than the inkiest depths of their heart.  
They said your name flat, grim and thin like dull graphite.  
They read you prayer, but I'm not quite sure what it contained, because the moment they spoke your name on the announcements this morning, the floor rushed up and up and up until the crack of my head met the vanilla scrubbed tile.  
The room blurred and the room buzzed and the announcer continued to talk in his unsharpened pencil rasp, and I hoped and hoped and hoped some more that they played our song at your burial.

I bury you in mountains I know I must climb
Still dreams of you left in the pits of my mind
Through the brambles and thorns of mania charge
I knew that this path was writ on my cards

You sent me out here, you sent me alone
Marching through night to build my new home
Wind pulls at my cloak and tugs me to east
Back there where I know my pain is a feast

I set my feet firm and dig them in sand
I know heading forward this West is my land
When they see me passing they’ll stutter and stare
“There goes a man whose mind I’d not dare”

All pretenses gone now I have arrived
In murky black pools my heart like a weight dives
In the inkiest drop off I see your face
Your hand is outstretched your eyes are like lace

The ice creeps up as I stare at your visage
So sweet and tender conflicts with my image
This pale face, this thing is a liar
From trying to hold you I must retire

Searching for you I sank to the bottom
Now I can see that I’ve been forgotten
What started out soft and could have been loving
Through recklessness, carelessness has turned into nothing

A nothing that swallows and fills me up
I choke out goodbye, I choke out good luck
I am dragged away up out of the pool
In black reflection I see only a fool

I leave him there in the water with you
I know heading West will pull me through
Through madness and madness and madness again
I know that this West is forever my pen

I’ll be the scribble, the wondering man
With heaving chest and shaking hands
In your room, in your bed I let that piece of me die
I’m heading through West where I leave you behind