Telling Lies

Drafted in 1995.

Telling a black boy he has to be better than white places him in a precarious position to the black man he has to become. He doesn't knowhe isn't expected to become anything, has yet to learn fully that what is implied is his own inferiority, and perhaps, if he is not lucky, or careful, his death. Yet the idealism of youth dreams: of having a fast car, of having a big house, of having a pretty girlfried; of becoming smarting than Einstein. Indeed, he dreams of becoming.

And if he wants to be rational, so much the worse. For then it falls to him to reconcile himself with a country intent on holding the best of his kind at arms's length, to confront what is, essentially, absurdity.

In school he learns about slavery, American slavery, that Africans, black people, like him, were imported and sold, like cattle, to the highest bidder.

And he breathes a small sigh of relief that he is born free.

The names he learns--from Crispus to Harriet to the Civil Rights Movement--are the requisite luminaries who contributed in a decidedly meaningful way to history, American history.

Telling a black boy he has to be better than white is telling him, in fact, that nothing he does will be enough. For every Malcolm X that he reads about, there are ten John Does, men that he the
-American is forced to encounter, but are of questionnable importance to he the African-.

Opening a dictionary, he may encounter a picture of Charles Drew and realize that he is, indeed, black. But what of Paul Lawrence Dunbar and the nameless thousands others he will demand to know of? It won't be until he equates color and power that the lessons of history, which, in fact, he is living, begin to bear a considerable weight.

Telling a black boy he has to be better than white issues him a challenge that he is sure to fail. And he has history to bear witness. He discovers it to be full of potential left dangling from poplar trees. His people were explorers and composers, doctors and divas, scientists and...successful. And if not they could be. But he doesn't know this. It, he, doesn't really matter.

And eventually he will have to consider the options open to him: to try to accept their situation, which is his own, or try to reject it. He has to attempt to redefine himself, to renegotiate the terms by which he is valued. Maybe instead of trying to become better than white, he'll settle for being better than black. He'll dream of becoming...the exception, not an example.

And his desire will be so strong it will drive him out, away from his neighbors and community. there will be voices telling him that men like them will never amount to anything. And he will believe the voices and flee, to safer, better enclaves where they are no longer a threat. Maybe the voices will be quieter at the bottom of a bottle or at the end of a gun. Maybe they seem less shrill in a big house, are more distant in a fast car.

But it is not a voice he has to fear, but a face, the tree from which so many of his ancestors hung. And he feels an uneasy guilt in its presence, for he knows it is still standing, and now he knows it to be closer to home. Maybe even in his own backyard.

Still Life (no. 2)

Men,
thick with well-fedness, talk
of things of great import only
to themselves,
convivially appraise women
who are their own--
eyes like breasts but not faces,
blond or black or red-headed heads,
excuse themselves with reflexive
vacancy, in doorways
bohemians-too-late smoke cigarettes
and nothing but,
struggle with great solemnity away
from each other.

Still Life

Windows, in steady progression
offer angels, carefully positioned
assemblages in black vests
and black shoes and black shades--
white wings, sleight of mouth invitation
of minimal relief among severed feet,
decapitated heads, outreached hands--
to be made whole on pavement,
wherever you find it,
could hardly keep silent from
congestion of bodies, strewn
on sidewalks in bags and carts
filled with things
they need most
what is no longer useful.