What is this . . thing . you have for black people?
Thing a thing for black people
Yahwell thats
because yare maudlinterribly slow on the uptake I didnt coin it
But you knew it!
I dont come from disposable
income
I come from coupons from shredding bars of Ivory soap to wash
clothes because it was less expensive than boxed detergent hung clothes on clotheslines
to dry because it was less expensive than a machine and the electricity to run
it
We ate organmeat because it was
less expensive
We grew a garden because our vegetables
cost less than buying them from the grocer
She got me an adult library card
for the Public Library and I read books no kids my age were reading
he wore scars for not
Richard
Wright Between the World and Me
And
one morning while in the woods I stumbled
suddenly upon the
thing,
Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing
guarded by scaly
oaks and elms
And the sooty details of the scene
rose, thrusting
themselves between
the world and me....
There
was a design of white bones slumbering forgottenly
upon a cushion of
ashes.
There was a charred stump of a sapling
pointing a blunt
finger accusingly at
the sky.
There were torn tree limbs, tiny veins
of burnt leaves, and
a scorched coil of
greasy hemp;
A vacant shoe, an empty tie, a ripped
shirt, a lonely hat,
and a pair of
trousers stiff with black blood.
And upon the trampled grass were
buttons, dead matches,
butt-ends of cigars
and cigarettes, peanut shells, a
drained gin-flask,
and a whore's lipstick;
Scattered traces of tar, restless
arrays of feathers, and the
lingering smell of
gasoline.
And through the morning air the sun
poured yellow
surprise into the
eye sockets of the stony skull....
And
while I stood my mind was frozen within cold pity
for the life that
was gone.
The ground gripped my feet and my heart
was circled by
icy walls of fear--
The sun died in the sky; a night wind
muttered in the
grass and fumbled
the leaves in the trees; the woods
poured forth the
hungry yelping of hounds; the
darkness screamed
with thirsty voices; and the witnesses rose and lived:
The dry bones stirred, rattled, lifted,
melting themselves
into my bones.
The grey ashes formed flesh firm and
black, entering into
my flesh.
The
gin-flask passed from mouth to mouth, cigars and
cigarettes glowed,
the whore smeared lipstick red
upon her lips,
And a thousand faces swirled around me,
clamoring that
my life be
burned....
And
then they had me, stripped me, battering my teeth
into my throat till
I swallowed my own blood.
My voice was drowned in the roar of
their voices, and my
black wet body
slipped and rolled in their hands as
they bound me to the
sapling.
And my skin clung to the bubbling hot
tar, falling from
me in limp patches.
And the down and quills of the white
feathers sank into
my raw flesh, and I
moaned in my agony.
Then my blood was cooled mercifully,
cooled by a
baptism of gasoline.
And in a blaze of red I leaped to the
sky as pain rose like water, boiling my limbs
Panting, begging I clutched childlike,
clutched to the hot
also the Hollywood Roundtable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u27coFlGXg
