Breathe Me Black

I just recently read this for a couple of audiences. It always goes over SO well so I decided to post it here. It is one of my true gems. This piece is dedicated to the amazing Brooklyn Poet, Barbara Newsome for inspiring it with her vivid words and characters. Yes..take me back...

“Breathe Me Black”

Breathe me black
As you take me back
To clay roads red
And fields of ninety degrees
Harvesting the crop
In the six degrees often forgot
With beads of sweat
Dripping
The ones that grandma
With her hands ancient
Cracked
And beautiful
Like the big ‘ol oak out front,
Would wipe away saying
‘Chile, It’s just the lord’s way
of coolin’ ya off’;

Breathe me black
As I’m taken back
To the haze
And that scent of country
That lingered
In hallways
And living rooms almost ramshackle
Aberrations of engineering
Testaments to the ingenuity of necessity
Survival
And the not knowing you were poor
Because there was wealth of love
And you actually had time
To be a child
Because grown folk’s business
And language
Was just that;

Breathe me black
And what I wouldn’t give to be back
At Sunday dinners
And in the yard
By the time the streetlamp
Flickered to life
Or best your hide be tanned;
At the back of my father’s pick-up
Old and reliable
The wind in my ears
And the scent of country in my nose
As we drove to the fields
Not to work
But as I realize now
To keep a connection
To our past and the success
Appreciation
Of simpler times
In the ninety degrees
Of the six degrees of separation
As we breathed in black
Instead of selling it
Misinforming it
To sell another ghetto rhyme
And the outfits to match
A Neanderthal mentality
That suffocates us faster
Than the ninety degrees that we bore
As we breathed in black
Times
Situations
Only to exhale
Clear
Understanding
Expectations
Determinations
In the six degrees of justification…
©2008clarencecbess