carmen X

i am all about expression
the beauty of language, the miracle of vision and the essence of noise.
~ ~ ~ Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep.
But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less.
No one on earth ever had a greater chance for glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost. It is quite exciting to hold the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or to weep.
At certain times I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty-Second Street Library-no one has anything on me. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me --zora
Anyone who has spent an hour with me will tell you
I am
well, I’ll let them tell it
not the type to sing my own song
memories of long ago tip toe into my daydreams
I wish I could have those days back
the woods behind my house growing up
the beach trips every summer
watching fire works from train tops
drinking that led to dancing on tables
sneaking into football games
the thrill of a track meet
rapture of a basketball game
the bonfires
Perhaps more personal factors to consider
I forever feel the urge to be reliable and to assume responsibility even to the peak of health weaknesses
the desire to uplift humanity is intense within me
I breathe the theory of socialism
I often wish I could tie on a cape and save all the children of the world
the only innocence on this earth not worthy of torture before they can learn to walk
but I also feel the urge to run far away
from governments, starving children and all the ways of the world
to write what comes to thought in solitude
to discover the infinite depths of one mind
or a mind that would not become my own after the absence of sanity
complexity is a good description