Reparations Redefinition: Bond

              The thing about facing your fears head on

is it only really works on TV. As an example, let’s say

              a clawfoot bathtub teeming with arachnids

is your garden variety anti-fantasy.

              Now, say the sitcom dad in you gets the itch

to do something experiential, something special

              for your 40th (stay with me), so you willingly

dive into a pool of 10,000 tarantulas, head-

              first. In the Fear Factor version

of this midlife episode, Ludacris is like

              Man, white people are crazy.

In reality, this sounds like a frightful fucking

              headache, six ibuprofen & stitches.

Like 80,000 eyeballs all up in your situation,

              if you catch my drift. & I bet,

the last thing you need is a group of  hairy

              climbers, & their many-legged offspring,

ogling your property. Sniffing up the ol’ oak tree

              after the acorns you squirreled away

for the fam when the market was healthy.

              Square any beef  between two parties

& you’ll find money lurking somewhere

              near the root. Of evil & fear,

Aristotle claimed, pain arises

              from the untoward bracing.

He strikes me as a particularly

              anxious dude. Extreme fear can neither

fight nor fly. But comply, I think

              Shakespeare implied.

The thing about facing your fears head on

              is your head &

the knowledge of history. From an aerial

              vantage, a battlefield

of sun-blanched skulls

              resembles one psychedelic mushroom patch.

Can you see the speckled gecko playing hide & seek

              with the ravenous Komodo dragon,

weaving through 2 million cavernous eye sockets?

              Or am I just deep in my spacesuit bag?

If it helps, you may think of this figure as figurative—

              a literal marker in the definition’s landscape

representing blacks slain

              during the Transatlantic Slave Conquest.

Or perhaps Greek tragedy begets your literary

              empathy. When Ray Parker Jr. sang

“I ain’t afraid of no ghost,” he didn’t account for

              the Great-Great-Granddaddy Apparition

of Social Studies. My fear of history is a valid fear

              of  Power—stripped, lorded over, misguided—

corrupting one’s sense

              of need in favor of excess. Head to head, bird to

nest, I’m saying I understand what steers our national

              stasis, our fossilized political animals, & I

forgive us. As an example of forgiveness, let’s say

              I had money to produce this

40 Acres & a Mule script with Spike Lee. As in

              reality, the narrative’s of little consequence.

But peep the plot-twist ending:

              Marques, our handsome protagonist

attorney (stay with me),

              wins a class action suit

to the tune of lifetime therapy

              for everybody.