After Thought

They were a mass, milling about on a marked, plotted field of green.
This mass, black, surrounded by fashioned stones- some polished- large enough to take notice of,
They are still no Stonehenge.

But we fool ourselves into believing the lie of our immortality.

The black mass, a Black mass,
Celebrating a Black life.
All this black on Black, for a life that was Black,
And there's nothing wrong with that.

It was a full life, colorful-
But mostly Black. It wasn't choice.
It was circumstance.

Movements through that life,
So tied to a color,
Possibilities for that life,
Limited by an 'other'.

That life made a mark,
So they do, in the green.
And like those before, they choose stone for this commemoration.

They say 'This will last,"
While I think 'Maybe longer than you.'
I've seen stones crushed to powder.
What does that do for a legacy?

To build a rock on death.
To mark that instead of life.
I don't want to see her gravestone.
I want to see the birth stone.

And I want it to be...
Black.


Note from me: I often find myself thinking about the disparate views on what it means to be Black. Not in an introspective way. I'm almost positive it has no meaning, not in any inherent sense. It only means something once someone like myself interacts with another person. Reactions will differ infinitely given an infinite amount of subjective experiences. It's something I'd like to term 'Black Relativity.' I propose that 'Blackness' only has meaning relative to the degree of reaction from the individual(s) with whom a Black person is interacting.
If I don't respond in a way that renders what someone's sense of 'Blackness' is as null, then I've had to either confirm or deny that sense. That is to say, 'Blackness' needs a *viewer, someone who- cued by a person's complection- is ready to make judgments ranging from an abstract idea like What it means to be inside black/brown skin to a specific idea like What her/his favorite music genre is. If we must interact for that sense to have worth, then when we are not interacting that sense is rendered null. Brings a new meaning the Black Death, doesn't it?