HARDCORE READING

(Poem 19 of 365)

HARDCORE READING

I often write about the hardcore social issues of life. 

So to, I am a writer of the horror stuff of scares and strife.

Even in the darkest times of  thoughts of Florida Hell...

I always go back to my one of my bookshelves, do tell...

My books, sometimes better than the embracing bosom of a wife.

RLJ 

TASTING THE BLACK FEAR

(Poem 18 of 365)

TASTING THE BLACK FEAR

Sitting at a stoplight to nowhere... these thoughts --

Yesterday was a warm day here in Northern Virginia.

I drove up to the gas station to put some gas in my car.

I was playing my music loud, I confess,

As I pulled up beside the gas pump.

The band on my CD is called Slave.

The song oozing from my 6 speaker system was "Watching You."

No cursing, no rap and no offensive tone in this CD.

I am a Negro man in my 50's.

I grew up in the times when black men expressed everything through music.

And we play our music loud when we drive down the street.

And we don't give a goddamn if you like it, or not.

And, just for context, white men play loud music in their cars, too.

Don't twist the facts and blame the black when you shoot them dead...

As they play their music in their cars!

Just because you are white and allowed,

By the government supposedly serving us both,

To shoot black men dead if you don't like their music.

I was alone at the pump at the gas station.

Within minutes a younger black dude drove into the stall next to me.

He got out of his car... and immediately approached me.

He said, "Be careful, man, they shoot black people over our music."

There was real fear in his eyes as he looked at me.

I assured him that to live in fear is not to live, at all.

I welcome the next dick who decided to attack me over my music.

We said a few more cool words and had a laugh, or two.

And then I got in my car and drove off before he was finished gassing his ride.

That exchange is a prime example of what it is like to be a black male today.

That exchange is a prime example of the fear in being black.

That exchange is a prime example of the paranoia of blackness.

That exchange is a prime example of what it is like:

TO LIVE AND DIE BLACK IN THE USA!

RLJ

ALWAYS WORTH A SLAVE'S PURCHASE PRICE

(Poem 17 of 365)

ALWAYS WORTH A SLAVE’S PURCHASE PRICE

(Fayetteville, N.C -- 1814)

Fresh off the rat infested horror of the slave ship docked at Southport...

Boated up the Cape Fear River to Fayetteville’s humid vicious import!

There are terrors that be hidden in this new land,

The calls of strange beasts from the forests, just out of hand...

But nothing more horrible than the evil fate of a snatched slave of export!

Few of your black brethren from villages different, and languages odd, too...

Ever spoke on that long death journey in fear of the lash from the ship’s crew!

It was a relief to first step out into the stark N.C. light,

After suffering from the lengthly light deprived plight...

Of being stacked like fish on top of rotting bodies turned putrid blue.

Can anything else be worse than the hell trip from Africa to places dire?

Can anything else be worse than losing your family to violence, rape and fire?

They made you watch as they raped your wife to put you in your place!

They made you watch as they slit her throat and smiled in your face.

Can anything be worse than the horror of watching your six children expire?

And here you are... kept alive because of your size and strength and organ.

And you are now standing in the stable to be auctioned like a beast of burden.

It is obvious that you are to be sold as breeding stock...

To produce the next generation of strong slaves to break the heavy rock!

Your turn is next as you are marched to the pagoda... for you, no bargain!

You are stripped naked as you are displayed like an Ox, a chicken and eggs!

They examine your teeth, your chest, your arms... and that between your legs.

You watch the men recoil as you are grabbed there...

And you watch the women recoil in intrigue as they stare!

$380.00 buys a buck slave forced into sex slavery for children... for the dregs!

You are just another human animal to be spoken of during dark meetings.

You work their fields, you give them child labor and you take the beatings.

And it is no perk to your private part and your mind...

When the Master’s mistress forces you to take her reclined...

Forcing you into a game of death if the Master discovers his wife’s dealings.

How did this tale of slavery past eventually come to be ended?

To heaven, or hell, will his captors eventually force him unbended!

Is the plight of his kind to be used and abused forever?

Will the Negro ever become more than white man’s slavery endeavor?

200 years later... 2014... and guess at the answer for the still offended!

RLJ

TO LIVE AND DIE BLACK IN THE USA

It is 2/16/14 right here in the heart of the United States of America!
At that time, who could have guessed American race relations would die in Florida!
Who could have believed the police would start executing black men in the streets!
How would have ever believed this shift from Zimmerman homicide to police homicide!
Who could have ever believed things would continue to deteriorate into Trump madness!
Who could have ever believed that by now America,
Because of the blatant war on the American black man,
That America now knows what it is... To Live And Die Black In The USA!

RLJ

(Poem 17 of 365)

TO LIVE AND DIE BLACK IN THE USA

I turned on my TV again this morning.
The news anchor was explaining another Florida shooting verdict.
The case of another adult white man shooting another black teenager dead.
The case of another unarmed teenage male from deep down south being murdered...
And his murderer not being convicted of the obvious murder by another Florida jury,
Thus giving another murderer a pass to keep his own hope alive...
Because his peers refuse to label him a murderer!
He might never spend his life locked away in a prison...
He gets to walk the earth alive and breathing air...
Because an American black person’s life is not worth the bullets that killed him...
And as long as the murderer is not labeled a murderer,
He can always continue to say he was in the right...
Because a jury of his peers refused to place that label on him!

This is just another day, it is, to be a black man.
This is just another day, it is, to cry in the palm of my hand.
This is what it is like to live and die black in America!
This is what it is like to live and die black in America!

I often wonder what it is like to be free.
I often hate what it is like to be me.
To live and die black in America!
To live and die black in America!



I live with a large red target painted on my back.
There have always been white men pointing a gun at it.
The Stand-Your-Ground laws of my own country betray me grossly.
And I never had a vote on white’s only laws devised for my own destruction.
They say I am welcome on my own plot of my American soil...
But I know I could be shot dead standing on the front porch my own personal plot.
Regardless of the millions of gallons of Negro blood already spilt for my freedom,
He can still shoot me dead where I stand...
Because of my skin color,
Because of his falsified perceived notions of my Negro threat,
And because of the fact that no one like me should have ever be freed, anyway!
Because to the man with the skin color and a gun and the law and the jury in his pocket...
When my own government refuses to protect me from him...
What chance do I have to live past my middle age years in my America?

This is just another day, it is, to be a black man.
This is just another day, it is, to cry in the palm of my hand.
This is what it is like to live and die black in America!
This is what it is like to live and die black in America!

I often wonder what it is like to be free.
I often hate what it is like to be me.
To live and die black in America!
To live and die black in America!



I do not care if a white woman...
Grabs her purse as I walk by her in the store.
I do not care if a white man...
Believes I am out to get his wife with my very presence.
I do care about the gun on the hip of the paranoid adult white man.
I do care about the laws that protect his right to kill me in cold blood.
I do care about the fact that my black son is a living target,
Every time he decides to walk an American street of the country of his birth.
I do care about the centuries of oppression that continues to this day!
I do care about the fact that a black man really has NO GODDAMN rights in America!
And I do care about the frightening facts of what it is like --
TO LIVE AND DIE BLACK IN AMERICA!

This is just another day, it is, to be a black man.
This is just another day, it is, to cry in the palm of my hand.
This is what it is like to live and die black in America!
This is what it is like to live and die black in America!

I often wonder what it is like to be free.
I often hate what it is like to be me.
To live and die black in America!
To live and die black in America!



How does a black man piece together an American life,
When he has no American paradise to get away to...
When the times are too lonely as he sits in his dark room afraid to go outside.
Who can he trust to give him safe passageway from here to there?
He will wonder why he is even trying to stay alive and not fade away into obscurity.
He wishes he knew how to swim in the ocean of vast forever, lost, in slavery hatred...
By people he never harmed the hair of, even in a past memory.
Why would that man want to kill this man who should be his brother in life...
In this supposed-to-be melting pot American life...
Where color is suppose to be the rainbow arching over Paradise found.
But this is obviously the way an American black man must live his life --
Learning that wasting his time away searching for paradise is a nightmare...
As he realizes what his fate will always be:
TO LIVE AND DIE BLACK IN AMERICA!

This is just another day, it is, to be a black man.
This is just another day, it is, to cry in the palm of my hand.
This is what it is like to live and die black in America!
This is what it is like to live and die black in America!

I often wonder what it is like to be free.
I often hate what it is like to be me.
To live and die black in America!
To live and die black in America!

RLJ

Waiting For The Return

(Poem 16 of 365)

WAITING FOR THE RETURN

Somewhere beneath the icy landscape of Virginia’s Summers lost,

Hides a root system of a perennial flower that brings back the soulful butterflies.

A long harsh Winter makes minds depressed as it drags them through the frost...

But just you wait, dear haunted souls... for the return of those profound Summer Fireflies.

RLJ

DOGS

(Poem 15, of 365)

DOGS

(Pit Bull Nightmares)

Newport News, Virginia

YOU --

-- carry your weapons illegally!

-- traffic in your illegal drugs!

-- listen to, and create, the music that has stolen a billion souls!

-- embrace the pimp and whore culture!

-- put that goddamn gold and silver metal shit over your teeth!

-- drag down the night club culture!

-- shame your mother, and her mother!

-- prove the stereotypes as reality!

-- have to wear the "gangster" uniform!

-- have to create collateral damage!

-- have to be real sons of bitches!

-- finally had to fuck-up and bring yourselves a world of hurt!

-- had to bring dogs into the mix!

-- had to bring dog fighting into the public forefront!

-- had to bring dog torture and dog murder to public knowledge!

-- had to give your stupidity a dumb-ass public football face!

-- had to turn white women and their children against you!

-- are now screwed blue to the wall of a PETA atomic bomb!

-- better realize your federal government now has you in its sights!

-- better believe it ... THEY are now after you!

-- should know that THEY whisper into the dark, tense night!

-- now know that wish you good goddamn riddance!

-- have transformed a piece of American culture.

YOU -- and your dogs -- are no longer invited into their football dreams.

Goodbye!

RLJ