As usual the black people are helping me

As usual the black people come correct,

helpin me,

encouraging, they understand what it means to wait, they know the meaning of time,

they don’t push you away, you have any idea what a gift it is not to be pushed away?

If a white person asks me how I’m doin and I shake my head no, they look at me like I’m substandard, they are a supercilious and pretentious race of dimestore deities who have

no sense of the soul or spirit;

if a black person asks me same thing and I shake my head s/he is just as likely to say

“struggling baby?”

I say, yes, I am that, and they look into my face and say-

“…You’ll be all right…”

How hard is that?

Huh?

How hard is it to be generous with me?

Afraid you’ll lose your wealth of self-possession?

Superior white like you, losin your composure, being plain fuckin human being?

Think again ass-wipe.

And how much good does it do? To be gentle with me?

No blood in the sink tonight, not bad, think I’ll stick with the niggers.

They tell me there is a place for me, I am not unwanted, all I need do is carve out my own niche in the world, these are direct quotes, my life is shattered and I am the shards, but they keep me straight, go all the way with worthless white twitches who want out.

I take what they can give and we have no pretense that it is enough, we are clear, and this is better than being invisible.

Why do this? I’ve done nothing for them, they may not even know me, but they know one thing: I am smart and the O.J. verdict pissed me off.

I’m sure white people would try to protect the world too, if they knew something about anything, but too busy studying Shakespeare in college.

Think for once, required-reading-ass-wipe.

Before desegregation ruined everything blacks had to have their own communities, better communities, white people, if cool enough to be comfortable, could walk around their neighborhoods and see kids playing the dozens, girls skippin rope, the women leaned out windows, men sat on storefronts and played cards, he could visit a barber and ask for a konk with no sense of alienation, I don’t know where I get this, could be wrong but am sayin it’s true, it’s ok not to know where you get things, it’s ok to imagine what you wish you could document, someday we won’t have any books left, fuckin whitey taking over everything and the black petty bourgeois bleach their complexions, wrongheaded homogenization, knotted up disloyal culture vulture, I wish I was Negroid so I could wear whatever color dress I wanted and no one would blink an eye, remember, black ladies? Ask yo mama.

If it wasn’t for white people there’d be no one to steal my cigarettes, someone keeps stealing my cigarettes, but black people don’t smoke, not the ones I know, not at 5 bucks a pack, no.

My first fake husband seemed ok til the day we took a shortcut to the movie theatre and drove thru desegregation’s forgotten urban neighborhood, we saw all these children, crumb snatchers, playin in the streets with big black fat rats, he said nothing in the world is right so long as that goes on and afterwards neither was he.

Maybe black people reach out to their enemies in order to keep from losing their minds, illusions and baseless faith as something to keep you going, let’s waste all the teevee time we have left to make no difference whatsoever,

I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do the something I can do.

(Helen Keller, 1880-1968, American Blind/Deaf Author, Lecturer, Caucasian, Amorist)

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