My Mother's Hair

my mother's hair
does not curl in an
orthodox way
it does not follow a pattern of
consistent loops or ringlets down her back

much like my own, it zigs and zags
sporadically
and defiant pieces
strike
wildly at the air

its coarseness beckons hands to
understand it in a tactile way
wrapping the natural curve of
the locks around their finger
as my mother often does
before dragging a front
piece through her lips

my own hair has recently
recovered from the strain
i put it through
when i was younger
repressing the curls
like my grandmother did
her accent

sometimes my mother would do my braids
45 minutes on one side
play for a while
then another torturous sitting
then one time she flat ironed it for me
after i begged her
not knowing how else to defy
the other little girls that
called me nappy head
other than to make my hair
shiny and straight
like theirs
as my grandmother had once
tried to flatten her curves
with calorie counting
and diet sodas.

i have been down that road too
pretending that celery and
saltines were a normal
lunch.
trying to make my outside
appearance
fit in as much as i
desperately wanted to
i understand now why my
grandmother lost her accent
and my mother lost her language

i no longer try to smooth
down the unruly curls
as they grow
OUT
and not down
i have learned to embrace
its unwieldliness
as a part of my own
my mother told me
recently
that if i can be patient
long enough
the weight will eventually
pull the curls
down
my sister came into
the livingroom then
her straight hair
filled with gel
and crunched to create
the illusion of curls

i used to think it was
funny
how my sister tries to
create the illusion
of curls
that my grandmother
mother
and myself have all tried
so desperately
to repress

but i understand now
because when my granmother
lost her country and
my mother lost her language
i lost my culture
and that's just her way
of trying to get it
back

someday i'll start using titles

this is not a hostage situation
exactly the opposite...
we demand that you release all of the hostages
IMMEDIATELY
from the shackles of media message fueled
by age old beaurocracies designed
to keep the cogs in place

we refuse to be cogs anymore

the machine cannot work once the gears stop
turning
and we are pulling the plug

here is our list of demands

we demand that the media that informs us
INFORM us
ELEVATE us and
EMPOWER us to EMPOWER others

we demand that fat white american men
in suits stop telling us how COOL it is
to be skinny and glowing tan while
eating McDonalds
smoking Newports
and wearing Tommy Hilfiger jeans

we demand that the corporately owned government
stop using mind control to
make us believe that we are safe by
scaring us into letting THEM
protect us

we demand that the same government stop using
the media and the illusion of democracy to
facilitate genocide of our youth

we demand real education for all people
regardless of origin, race, creed, or wealth

we demand an information audit of Washington DC
so that we can become informed consumers of
political bullshit

we know how to play the game
but hopscotch is for kids
and we've grown up

my ghetto

my ghetto is not brand name
i am not from the bronx, south central, the southside,
or even roxbury like my mom
the gunmen behind the bullets in my baby brother's bedroom wall
or baby keila's two-year old back have never been played by
francis capra or fredro starr

the two burning cars outside my bedroom window
were not part of a protest or riot,
and the rash of arsons that claimed families all over
the neighborhood
only made the local section of the paper

the weapons that we found playing in the vacant lot
did not belong to bloods or crypts
though the latin kings had a strong hold on the block
we used to watch the local news,
to see if we saw our street on tonight, or anyone we knew
the fires were on sometimes, or hit and runs, or drive bys

we were invisible, however, when zero tolerance
swept young people off the street and into
DSS custody or juvie for wearing baggy clothing
or walking home late at night through their own street

invisible still when giant potholes killed the shocks
on the old beat up cars we tried to keep nice
and the sidewalks made rollerblading or even
walking under the dim broken streetlights dangerous
but that didnt really matter, cuz when the streetlights came on
you better have been inside anyway
or your mom would come drag you in

we were invisible when we held meetings in our
backyards
with lemonade and the couple of beat cops who cared
enough to listen
speaking in a communal voice that losing our kids
to guns or jails was not a good enough choice

there was no tape rolling when grandmothers yelled from their
porch to "SLOW DOWN, can't you see there are kids trying
to play?"
and the basketball game would halt momentarily as we
all scattered to grab a nearby piece of sidewalk as the
offending car bounced up and down on the rocky road

there was no photo op as we all worked together to clean
up the empty lot,
using earth day as an excuse to have the city come pick
up the broken couches, tvs, and car parts
and then planting a patch of vegetables so all of us kids
could see how things grow
still no copy when the police chased a robbery suspect
out of his bedroom window
and tackled him on top of a patch of carrots and lettuce
still too young to harvest

still we watched together as house after house on the
block was boarded up and burned into the night
and once, i remember, before school
and the firefighters rolled in,
but not as quickly as they did each fourth of july
when we'd block off the intersection and heap
mattreses, broken chairs, and tables onto the road
filling the sky with our own version of fireworks

secretly i was grateful for the firefighters on those nights
i could feel the heat from the fire in my bedroom, always
terrified that mine would be one of those houses
even kept the things i wanted to keep in a bag next
to my bed, in case the beeping woke me in the night
and i had to get out right quick
before the smoke filled my lungs like it had monique's and
her dad's.

this is just the way i remember it though
and the fuzzy lines of 15 year old memories can be unreliable
but there is not documentation to disprove it
the meetings, the cleanups, the lack of police consistency
the fact that they never found the man that put those
our bullets in baby keila's back while she slept

this is our history and there is no book
there is no movie, no tv show, no newspaper articles
and almost none of it can be found on the world wide web
it sounds trivial, but without being able to see our
history, how can we learn from it?

this is our history
it is a story with many chapters and mine is only one
it is not the first, and it will not be the last
but it is mine
the way i remember it
it may not be entirely accurate
but it's what i've got.