Black Funk

By Kwame Dawes

The rigid of my jaw bone

is power forged in the oven

of every blow I have felt.

My water walk is something like

compensation for a limp.

Don't begrudge me my sashay

walk, it's all I got sometimes.

'Cause I know the way you stare,

pale blue eyes like a machete edge

catching the colour of new sky,

the way you barely whisper

your orders, spit out the food,

complain about my shuffling gait,

snorting out my funky smell,

find fault in each task I do,

never right, never good enough,

curse my children like dogs,

cause I know you just hurting

drooling your bitterness

when my back is turned,

when the shape of my black ass

swings that way you hate,

sashaying through this room of daggers.

I know you're wondering what I've got

down there, in my belly, in my thighs,

make him leave your side,

crawl out of his pale sick skin

and howl like a beast at night,

whimper like a motherless babe

suckling on me, suckling on me

You can't hide the shame you feel

to know I sometimes turn him back.

I know you know it, from the way,

he comes on you hard and hurried,

searching for a hole to weep his soul in—

yes, I turn him back when I want,

and he still comes back for more.

I've got my pride sometimes.

I know the way you try to read me

try to be me, can't be me,

never be me, never feel the black

of me, never know the blues in me,

'cause you never want to see you

in me even though we bleed together,

finding each other's tidal rhythms

and bloat together like sisters,

hoarding the waters of the moon together

So I sashay through your life,

averting the blades with my leather skin.

I abuse you, and when he bawls,

that is my pride at work,

all I've got sometimes.

I'll cook your meals

until he keels over,

and you just have to take it

'cause I took it with no fuss

when he forced his nothing self on me,

while my babies sucked their thumbs

within the sound of my whimpering;

I paid baby;

I'm just reaping what y'all done sowed

Sometime I could sit down

and remember better

than I think I could remember—

from way back—better than I can do now.

I may say something today,

or see something today

or somebody may say something,

and it goes out.

*   *   *   *   *

posted 14 September 2006