Check this out politician running for congress depics his story and shares his words as his idea of "keeping it real"........... at least someone in politics can relate to us the "people"
http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=978-0-9796636-9-7 Son2MotherBy: Kevin Powell
Mother, have I told you That you are the first womanI ever fell in love with, that whatI’ve always wanted in life is to hearYou say you love me, too?
That is why, ma, it has takenMe so long to write this poem.For how could I, aGrown man, put words to paperIf I am that little boyCowering beneath the power ofThat slap, the swing of that belt,Or the slash and burn of that switch You used to beat me into fear and submission?
I constantly cringe, ma, When I think of that oft-repeated chorus you sung
As a fusillade of blows walloped my skeleton body:Are you gonna be good? Are you gonna be good?Sometimes when I call you these days, mother,I just don’t know what to say, thus I fall silent,Even when you ask “How are you doing?” I want to give you real talk,Tell you that I am still that stunted only child Traumatized by the violence of your voice;That I am still that shorty too terrified to fall Asleep for fear of your pouncing on me The moment I shut my eyes—And you did, mother, again and again, Until I could no longer sleep peacefully As a child, and I have never actually had Many tranquil nights of sleep since. I lay awake sometimes, as an adult, Thinking someone is going to get me, Going to strike me, going to kill meBecause of those heart-racing hours Of darkness far far ago.
And I remember that time I ran under Our bed, and in your titanic rage You tore the entire bed apart, The frame falling on one of my legs, And there I was, stuck, mother,And you ripped into me anyhow. And oh how I howled for mercy. But there was none, mother. Yet there was that chorus:Are you gonna be good? Are you gonna be good?And I really did not know, mother, what being good meant. Nor what you wanted me to be. Because one day I thought you loved me And the next day I thought you hated me.
And I did not know back in the day, ma, That you had been assaulted and abused The same way, by my granddaddy,Your father, a 19th century son of ex-slaveswho would break you and yourThree sisters and brother down with mule whips,With soda bottles, with his gnarled hands—That he was an embittered mister,That you were the child who became Most like your father. Do you notRecall that past, mother?I am saying you once chided me, After you learned I had struck someone as an adult,To keep my hands to myself, and I wanted to sayBut, ma, why didn’t you keep your hands to yourself?
Why didn’t you command your hands, your arms, To hug me, instead of urging them to damage me?
And that is what I previously was, ma: damagedGoods that liked living on the other side of midnight.That is why, mother, there was no sleep for me till Brooklyn,Because I needed to escape the concrete boxNeeded to escape the mental terrorismNeeded to escape you and that Paranoid schizophrenic existence.I am not crazy, ma. I knowOur destinies were frozen in those days When we sharedThat bed and room together, Because we were too poorTo afford a full apartment.To those days, mother, when I Thought you were the bravestHuman being on earth as youFought super-sized black rats withYour broomstick, or effortlesslyShooed the army of roaches away From our dinner table—
Maybe, ma, I have not beenAble to write this poemBecause I can envision you as a Young mother, the one who suitcasedHer dreams when you left SouthCarolina, when you moved, first, to MiamiTo create a new life for yourself, to fleeThe world that murdered your Grandfather, a local cook, by stuffing food in his mouth,Then baptizing him in cracker water and proclaimingIt was an accident. It was the world that knockedOn your grandmother’s door and toldHer she had to give up 397 of those 400 acresOf land called the Powell Property—One penny for each acre of land—And what your grandmother was left with Was a jar of soil called Shoe Hill,The contaminated hill where you were born, ma:That world never bothered to change theName from the Powell Property. And there youWere, at age eight, sunrising with the moldy menAnd the wash-and-wear women As God’s yawn and morning stretchTickled the rooster’s neck,Waking you good colored folks to toil on that Powell Property—To pick cotton for White folks as if beingCheap and exploited labor was your American birthright.
And you were angry bye and bye, mother.
You would get so angry, Aunt Birdie told meOne time, that sweat droplets would form on your nose,Your brow would curl up, and the world andAnyone in it would become your Empty lard can to kick back and forth up the road a piece.Ah, ma, but you were such a pretty little BlackGirl—I have the picture right here this minute,Of you at 12 or 13, tender and dark ebony skinA beautiful yet temperamental and unloved Black girl Told that you were ugly, that you had ugly hair,That you would never be anything other thanThe help and wooden steps for someone else’s climb—
But you were persistent, ma, and mad determinedTo make something of yourself.And Jersey CityWelcomed you as it welcomed each of The lost-found children of the Old SouthWelcomed y’all country cousins to Number runners slumlordsPimps drug dealers bad creditHuge debts and would-beProphets who called themselves storefront preachersAnd there you were, mother, within a year,With my father—
Was he your first love, ma, did he mopThe Carolina clay from your feet?Did he sprinkle sweet tea and lemon on your belly?Did he ever really make love to you, mother? Or was he more like that plantation robotWho was built to mate then make a quickDash to the next slave quarters?What I do know, mother, is that you went to the hospitalAlone, to spread your legs for A doctor whose plasma face you do not rememberTo push forth a seed you had attemptedTo destroy twice because you feared hisBirth would mean the death of you.But there I was, ma, in your armsScreaming lunging fleeingAnd you were so tremendously ashamedTo be an unwed mother that you did Not tell Grandma Lottie for five years,Until that day we showed upIn your hometown of Ridgeland, South Carolina.
But what a mother you were:You taught me to talkTaught me to know my nameTaught me to count to read to thinkTo aspire to be something.
You, my grade-school educated mother, Gave me my swagger—Told me I was going to be a lawyer or a doctor,Told me I was going to do big things,That I was going to have a better lifeThan this welfare this food stamp this government cheeseHad pre-ordained for us.And we prayed, mother, yes lawd we prayed—To that God in the sky, to the White Jesus on our wall, To the minister with the good hair and the tailored suits,To the minister with the giftTo chalk on busted souls and spit game in foreign tongues—And back then, ma, I did not understand the talking in tonguesThe need to pin pieces of prayer cloth on our attireThe going to church twice a weekThe desperation to phone prayer hotlines when there was trouble.But what you were doing, ma,Was stapling our paper lives together as best you couldMaking a way out of no wayEspecially after my father announced,When I was eight,That he would not give “a near nickel” to us again.And he never did, mother, never—
And I sometimes wonder if that is whenThe attacks got worse because you were So viciously woundedBy my father’s ignorance and brutalityThat that ignorance and brutalityWas transferred to meAs you would say, in one breath,Don’t be like your fatherAnd in anotherYou just like your no-good daddy
And, yes, I am crying this second, mother,As I write this poemBecause I see you today:A retired Black woman with a limp, a bad leg,Shuffling up and down three flights of stairs.Too headstrong to allow me to move You from that heat-less apartment, Life reduced to trips to the grocery storeA bus ride to the mallA sacred pilgrimage to the laundry roomAnd the daily ritual of judge shows, Oprah, and the local news.
And, mother, you remain without the love you forever Crave, and you forever speak of getting married one day.And you are so very worn out fromFifty-four years of back breaking work—
But this I know now:Your life was sacrificed so that I could have one, ma.
So I write this poem, son to mother, to say I love you Even if you refuse to accept my wordsBecause you are too afraid to defeat the devilAnd bury the past with our ancestors once and for all.I write this poem To say I forgive you for everything, mother—For the poverty for the violence for the hungerFor the loneliness for the fearFor the days when I blamed you for my absent fatherFor the days when I wanted to run awayFor those days when I really did run away—I forgive you, ma, for those days you cursedAnd belittled me, for those days when you saidI was never gonna make it.Oh, yes, ma, I do forgive, I forgive you forThe beatings, I do, dear mother, I do—Because if it were not for all of who you areAll of where you come fromAll of what you created for meI would not be alive today.
For below the bloody scar tissues of your fire and furyAnd aggravations and self-imposed house arrest Is a woman who defied the mythmakers Turned her nose up at the doomsayers—Is someone who fought landlordsAnd crooked police officers andSocial workers and school systems andDeadbeat men who wanted to live off of Her; and from the tar and feathered remains Of lives noosed from the very beginning,We have survived, and here we are, mother:You have never said you love me But I know every time I come homeAnd you’ve made potato salad and stringbeans,Every year you’ve mailed me a birthday cardOr asked if you should buy me pajamas for Christmas,I know that you are,In your own wildly unpredictable way,The greatest love I’ve ever had in my life—
Kevin Powell is a writer, activist, author of 8 books, and a 2008 Democratic candidate for the United States Congress in Brooklyn, New York. “Son2Mother” is excerpted from his new poetry collection,
No Sleep Till Brooklyn, which can be ordered at
http://www.softskull.com. Kevin can be emailed at
kevin@kevinpowellforcongress.org
