Black
Crime festered hoods, drug overlords, poverty punished ghettos,
HIV/AIDS ravaged cadavers, down-low deceivers, violent thug gangs ,
misogynistic populism,  health disparities run amok,  fissuring educational gaps, skyrocketing unemployment.
When that loud group of boys got on the bus how I recoiled in judgement.
The distance I tried to place between myself and that shadow
earned me a lifetime of imprisonment, stuck in my own foul reflection

Black
But now as I look, I see an primal energy, raw and irrepressible, a sacred strength
passed on through decades of hardship, in song, food, and fellowship
and the ability to endure the most nightmarish tempests
such will erase and transmute the jim crows and apartheids
because nothing less than love and truth are the alchemical agents
working to free us all at last

Black
I used to be afraid of the dark
but now I embrace it in wholeness.
When you sit alone in the true depths of darkness
you begin to be breathed by it and you realize
that chasing the light can be a distraction.
I celebrate the mystery of darkness
I surrender myself to the unknown
to discover in each shadowy moment
the inherent beauty of the night