Can’t Think After Yet [AAP#2]

SECOND UP in the African American Perspectives at UMX feature is a young amiga with a powerful soul and the words to prove it. She’s known around the blogarrio as Blackamazon, and sometimes we call her BA. Here is your daily dose of corazón and remember to drop by every day until Sunday for a fresh post in the series.

—Nezua

Blackamazon writes regularly (or wishes she could) at Having Read The Fine Print. Twenty something she keeps trying to find a way to make her big mouth and her propensity for troublemaking pay her student loans.

Can’t think after yet

I am mad you said it.

Girl sweet jesus girl.

I am crying because

For the first time I believe I can live.

I cried because you said it, I cried because I live it.

I am crying because I feel it.

I cry because people have been telling me I was gonna die for this mouth since I was seven years old.

Because that’s what you told mouthy lil black girls and boys, for so long.

Because every hero I ever had that looked like me, that didn’t perform,or shoot hoops, or deal in some commerce of the body

At the very least Took a beating , that was just part of the game.

And if you were a black man,

a Malcolm

A Medgar

A Martin

that if you got real good at it, if you truly became one who put your love of god,you love of your people, your love OF THIS COUNTRY THIS FUCKED UP IN SO MANY WAYS, that wrote you into the constitution as 3/5 of a man even as you BUILT THIS ON YOUR BACK BEFORE HALF OF THEM FOLKS WERE EVEN ON THIS SIDE OF THE EARTH?!?!?!?

THIS COUNTRY

that if you loved it enough to hold it truly accountable , to believe it could truly live up to the promise, if you said that out loud if you said it in any way that was eloquent and intelligent, that was heartfelt that moved people ESPECIALLY BLACK PEOPLE

You were t shirt fodder, for paintings in the living room, but for a life

Not for you.

When this started, even in the primaries, part of the hurt, that infuriated me so wasn’t just my fury at the general dumb that is white folk talking bout race, and proper order of firsts

But the fact that everyone WAS COMFORTABLE that he was threatened with death

EVERY DAY

Because in THIS COUNTRY that’s what we do to black men

We’re not mean to them

We don’t just stack the deck against them

WE TRY TO KILL THEM

They just gotta deal with it.

That while this important “first” was being dealt with on one side as what was owed

People was praying he didn’t win cause

They couldn’t take it.

THEY BELIEVED IN HIM, THEY BELIEVED HE WAS BEST

and they KNEW

they KNEW in their hearts the country they live in the only country they EVER LIVED IN would

KILL HIM

forget not letting him win

forget being cruel to him

KILL HIM

but we go on. Because that’s all we know to do.

I have only been in this country for ONE GENERATION

and I KNOW.

We learned it in our bones.

Imagine those for CENTURIES AND CENTURIES

and oh god oh god

to listen to talk to be apart to criticize to disagree to love to hate

and to know that everyone almost everyone who did any of those things

STILL end it in their hearts with A PRAYER

because we KNEW

and still AS A PEOPLE

eternal canaries in a coal mine.

Only by faith

every victory making it harder to fight this dream

every good campaign decision breaking your heart

Dear God

Bless him Jehovah

Allah

Mother Earth

Yahweh

OBEAH

ANCESTORS ALL

please don’t grant us another picture.

Please not another Myrlie

Not another Coretta

not another going back till that ship on that sea woman rocking now fatherless children

Not another beautiful “strong black woman” punished by loneliness for loving a man trying to be good. Not another group of brothers in tears kicking themselves because they FELL FOR IT THIS TIME AGAIN. That they believed that this time work would pay off

We prayed for it, chanted lit candles

and it seems like it snuck up on us.

No one envisioned an obama presidency, not the way we talked about gore or clinton

not that way

because hey 2000, 2004

and then last night

sweet jesus

oh ancestors

you mean I get to look at little black boys and say

You don’t have to be SOMEBODY

an abstract idea

because NOBODY

actually got to live to see it

Baby you can be PRESIDENT

I get to tell lil black girls some one will call you the love of their life for being you and being smart

to be VIOLENT at the mere thought of people even pretending they knew enough struggle to be “post racial”

to read this condescending over familiar cooption

and KNOW THATS WHAT THIS NEEDED

to not even to understand why you so mad.

and then realize you ain’t mad

You so scared

That this this moment you NEVER BELIEVED that you never thought could happen that the man on the scooter in the oxygen mask

this moment even if you don’t agree politically

even if you expect to be let down

that when you come from people that EVERYDAMN Thing you did was by faith alone

and that WAS ALL YOU COULD ASK FOR

and now

now faith made this

to realize how small this pain has made your dreams. That at the dawn

at this moment

you don’t even know how to ask for anything else

But please

Please sweet jesus

please

please who ever is listening

right now

don’t take it away.