From “MBJ”
lq#2 - yellow general wash
I am nearly 28
The cosmic age of saturn’s return
Karmic retribution awaits like economic reparations my ancestors have earned
The universe on the verge of payin me back
I feel like everything starts over again
Beginning with this image of blue sound
Heartbeat profound
I’ve printed the email out and its sitting now, peacefully on my lap
A son…
I’ve never been a woman
Y’know that’s a story unto itself
But this being
I’ve spent my whole life seeing a brown boy’s days to come
And before they reach 18 so many brown boy’s live already done
Brown boy
Feared
Brown boy
Step aside we don’t want you here
Brown boy
Only respect those who respect you
Brown boy
Live your life knowing the mainstream world only respects a few
Brown boys
And this will never be tolerated as an excuse
Brown boy
Guilty until proven innocent
Demonized
You stand accused but you stand firm
Like sacred ground brown…
Boy, am I supposed to teach you these things?
lq#3 white general wash
How many brown boys left to be taught by the wilderness
Destiny hung
Hinged
A doorway to death
Your life is great white fetished hyped and hexed
Do I tell you these things right away brown boy
Only 5 months in the womb we’ve been hunted for so long my son
My son are you going to be hunted too?
lq # 8 pink special
Somewhere between Mother nature and father time
There’s a spiraling myth about
A father
Forever chasing the rising son
A modern Sisyphus stuck behind a boulder of sol
The father is mythic and misfit
A mystic
A self-destructing missle
Amiss amidst a monolithic image of what he’s supposed to be
A father
Chasing the rising son
Like the horizon rushing to the seam of sky and sea
She would give birth in water if she could
Our conservative insurance and threadbare wallets say she can’t
So we compromise
Natural birthing class
Easy to come by in the bay area
Land of hemp granola and all things alternative
It’s almost out turn to share how we’re
feeling with the rest of the group
Sitting in a circle
Generation X
Our coach is at the chalkboard
drug free vaginal birth
(personally
knock me the fuck out
but maybe that’s why I was born this sex
I don’t possess a woman’s strength
Her body’s all stretched
Our baby’s body’s growing in length
Arms legs chest head)
You wanna do this drug free go right ahead, be my guest
Now I’m about to be a guest on the hot seat
Bamuthi…
Namaste…
By this time next week
You’ll be a father
How are you feeling
Maybe I should be paying attention to what this white lady’s question
But man I’m reelin back in a daydream of
Mother nature and father time
Crackin riddles about a cat undulating his spine as he strides towards
The son in the east
Thinks he recognizes self in the rising
But he just cannot see
He is blinded by light
His life like time in a dream
The place where relativity ends so long as we sleepo
And somewhere
There are 8 pairs of future parental eyes
Are all on me
Waiting to see if I’m feeling
Anythingbut what I’m feeling is the struggle of the pursuant father in my daydream
I’m feeling the visions of mythic men we see in solar mirrors when we sleep
I’m feeling damn good
I’mo be a father next week and then all of a sudden I’m
Feeling like I cant… .
You gotta move m’kai
lq # 10 blue center special
I believe in him and I must
There’s this race to be run and my folks is losin
Past is prologue
Our epicenter is an ancestor’s epilogue
An epithet if we ain’t eased that ancestor’s burden yet
He used his great grandfather’s death as a scroll to scribe a scripture
Whisked the man back to life with unborn whisper
Son do you know who you are
An ascendant descendant deciphered from stars
Intone the indescribable like a shadow my son
We are men
Bury nothing but bones
Cry rivers of tears
Deeply we run
A race to be won
Guided like Harriet with visions of sugar plum skinned
Hung thin strange fruit our roots reach deep
We men are men
Amen
Amin
Your din your duty
Your destiny to move
like the way you move me
Your destiny to move like the way
you
move
me…
Your destiny to move like the way
you
move
me…
Your destiny to move like the way
you
move
me…
lq # 18 blue and white general wash
Cycles to break
No more lying
Much less flying
Call your grandma
Practice faith.
Don’t confuse your art with your life
Embody what you write
Stop contradicting.
Slipped in the groove of institution and reparations
Funk and function equally separating to reveal me in the break
Psychically cycling
I got patterns to shake
Music to make
Culture to love
Guilt to feel
Prayers to say
Cycles to break
Don’t instill fear in the boy
Pray with full body
Practice faithfulness
and faith
cycles to break
there’s more than one way to live…
more than one way to believe black is beautiful
more than one way to raise kids
more than one way to love
more than one struggle
more than one answer
more than one way to break
It’s ethereal
Lyrical miracle
Almost Biblical
The cyclical
Hear it different
It’s ethereal Lyrical miracle
Almost Biblical
Hear it different
cyclical
Steerable
Un-nearble hearable
Liminal Spherical
Physical quizzical
Is it
Is it
Is it is it is it real?
When does it end?
Notes:
From the book Sing a Black Girl’s Song: The Unpublished Work of Ntozake Shange by Ntozake Shange. Copyright © 2023 by the Ntozake Shange Revocable Trust. Reprinted by permission of Legacy Lit, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc., New York, NY. All rights reserved
This piece is part of the portfolio “My Name Back to Me: Ntozake Shange” in the September 2023 issue.
Source: Poetry (September 2023)