I want God This God Who created These brave souls Souls that lived and fought for us Those He covered and preserved in bold I want God This God Who pieced Strong people together The God who carried Them through tempestuous storms To survive the most treacherous weather I want God This God Who answered My ancestors’ plea A God who continues To strike the demons down To build my equity I want God This God Who puts no other man before me Who values sun burnished skin And restores complete My hard fought dignity I want God This God Who continues to renew my hope And for accursed dream killers He fashions his unyielding stiff rope Not one of the mortal stock Of the many who claim his name in mock For those indeed will not be going To the land that is only made For those who spoke a truth Of love and care for fellow dust And lived lives of full and righteous proof I want God This God Who knit together those who love and give Who advocate for dreams of the meek As long as this earth lives
Glory lasts always. Rest in peace, Brother Soldier Representative John Lewis. Rest in peace, Brother Soldier Rev. C.T. Vivian. Sleep in God’s peace and our ancestors’ embrace
There’s a trauma that sometimes sickens me It sits in my cells, having traveled in generations of collective memory Finds my own consciousness and whispers “You cannot be free; your time’s almost up; there’s nothing more you can say or be That makes a difference
Vile liquid churns in my stinging throat and Fear grabs hold my fighting hope and Stills my movement and hides my rope To stop my climb And all I want to do is find Before the world finally sputters and unwinds That heralding voice that lifts and resounds “This is the way to Higher Ground” Put my feet on that Higher Ground… Plant my soul in Higher Ground… Lord, just let me feel the thrill of Higher Ground!
Today is the 4th And I will claim peace As I pray to my God That my angst will decrease Today is the 4th And today I still weigh Whether protestations for equality Will ever hold any sway Today is the 4th But what does that mean When carotid chokeholds still murder Unarmed Black and Brown dreams Today is the 4th A day for which many of my ancestors Bravely and hopefully fought While others of my progenitors Were trafficked, sold, and bought Today is the 4th And I want so badly to sing But notes of antiblackness Still dampen Freedom’s ring And people still feign ignorance Don’t understand why they shouldn’t cheer and jeer “red skins” Or why they should welcome “huddled masses” Who dream to enter in And further question anger from those who’ve had an overfill Of decades of trauma beyond the 4th That have made liberty unreal
However…
Today I WILL celebrate the 4th Not for what it is, but for what could one day be I will claim in faith and work That we can all be free In law and soul and spirit We will strive for all-the-better We must believe it’s possible That we can craft and fashion and tether A way that we might celebrate A National July 4th A Freedom Party Genuinely Together
I am weary of liturgies and requiems I’ve written to still my soul I am weary of emerging horrors Perpetrated by blue hearts frozen cold I am weary of watching my babies die As they walk the halls of hate As they run the streets of disdain and fear As they dance through beguiling gates As they are ambushed by dark spirits Seeking release for anger and power Shadowed in corners, prepared to pounce Brown-bodied victims of the hour I am weary of pouring love And not returned the cup I am weary of loose-lipped rhetoric That promises “Things will change. Look up.” I am weary of waiting on others To decide that they will do right My gut cannot absorb the lies Cloaked in sugary melodies and light I am weary of watching history repeat Politicized plagues, unmasked and militarized streets Fashioned nooses, licensed lynchings Fickle help on legal benches Tears that mourn for the opressors’ stone glory Absolute feigned ignorance of our stories I am weary of watching small gods strut I am weary of crying “My God! What would you have me to do? Cast them down, Lord! Bring us through! “ We live in times with naked kings, and Subjects circle to let their praises ring And right is wrong And Evil drops the dance and song At our feet While we look for saviors To orchestrate marvelous feats And wear cloaks of perfection So keen to live in protection We become confused And employ the anciently used All or nothing familiar ruse And flawed logic permits many to choose Yea, choose the enemy or downright refuse To engage in our own escape… I am weary I am weary And my words, on their own, are not enough
So on today, I just want to stop and reflect on the concept of “freedom” as it exists in this land, particularly with the boundaries of the United States. On June 19, 1865, approximately 2 1/2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was given, the word regarding the freedoms that had been established on January 1, 1863 finally reached Texas. This, as it relates to the physical freedom from bondage, is the date that those, who were once counted as 3/4 human, were no longer required to toil on plantations, within homes, or anywhere else within the United States without pay. The awareness of this commemoration, in recent years, has become a celebrated occurrence even outside of the state of Texas, as many around the United States continue to ponder and insist on ever increasing freedoms, equity, and equality for all. Therefore, it is fitting that we celebrate what has happened, as well as consider what needs to happen in order that we might better dwell in peace, prosperity, freedom, and unity.
You don’t have to speak my language for me to love you. You don’t have to worship as I do for me to love you. You don’t have to be my shade, racial mixture, ethnicity, nationality for me to love you. You don’t have to love as I love for me to love you. You don’t have to be like me or like mine for me to love you.
I just have to love you.
A Start…
I see you trying while we’re dying
Weaving back and forth between the phrases
Your mouth may have never felt compelled to form until now
Wanting to say the right thing
(It is a start)
But when it comes out
Your flesh struggles to separate the years of “no need” from the apologies of the new day
Words fumble and jumble, and the need to protect your fear slides in to lessen the impact of your attempts
As well as the wind it took to push it forward
Your message received, but the relief flees when
Your words are regurgitated in the mouths of those who have believed
That it was awkward, unenlightened, insincere…
Those who have anxiously waited to believe that your years of disdain and flawed perceptions had totally shifted
While they were dying for change even as they buried their dead
Between tears and fatigue, they dwell on what you said
Hallowed Grounds: Sacred Sites of African American Memory
Hallowed Be Thy Name…
In my mind, there are sacred sites of striding and struggling
Striations of strain and strength
In memories I once lived and those I inherited, I marvel at how they and I “made it over,” as if I floated in on the broken but braced backs of a superhuman ancestral brood…
For how on earth, Heaven, or hell could I have moved clay lips to laugh, lie, cry, love, preen, protest, speak life, and dodge death…
And I’ve come to realize that these sanctified places of terror, trial, and triumph are ordered in my thoughts, a reminder that true freedom is always bought with a price of great sacrifice and and justified only through an ointment of redemption
And so the Spirit moved among these places
Gave a massaging message while they were moaning while in manacles
Hallowed be thy name…
Inspired their holy dance while in deprivation
Hallowed be thy name…
Gilded the Grace that would carry them
Hallowed be thy name…
Answered prayers whispered only in their thoughts
Hallowed be thy name…
Cloistered me in an ancestral seed
Hallowed be thy name…
Birthed me on a bank of better
Hallowed be thy name
Reined in my reckless
Hallowed be thy name
Gave me strength to fight the feckless
Hallowed be thy name…
The Spirit has moved in many times and places, yet today can be seen in faces of those who know in their hearts that they are but a small part of a greater plan and can still cry “Hallowed be thy name…” in wholly fickle lands
Regina Yvette Carter Garcia
I am Regina Yvette Carter Garcia, daughter of Evelyn Jean Simpson Carter, daughter of Bessie Lee Teel Adams Simpson, daughter of Carrie Teel Adams, daughter of Margaret Carroway Teel, daughter of Cinda Woolard Carraway.
A powerful lesson that my grandmother Bessie Simpson taught me during a time that I was having a crisis of faith was that whatever I believed had to be something that I knew for myself. I needed to be able to see it proven in my life. She never told me that I had to believe what other people told me, to believe one ideology or another, but to believe what I saw working in my own life. Then she shared her testimony with me. It rocked my world! As I applied and tested, my faith in my Divine Power grew stronger…Everyday, I praise my God for who and what she was in my life.
La Profesora's Pen 