Every able bodied man and woman
should seek to create platforms
from the positions of privilege and ability,
they have naturally inherited
that will give a unified voice and power amongst the many
that balances out the higher power of the few.
Poetry and Prose by Russell Wardlow
Every able bodied man and woman
should seek to create platforms
from the positions of privilege and ability,
they have naturally inherited
that will give a unified voice and power amongst the many
that balances out the higher power of the few.
Sky is blue
everything black and white
I am grey…or gray
We won’t shut up and dribble
We won’t juke and jive
We won’t stop kneeling
We won’t stop assembling
We won’t stop talking about it
We won’t stop making you uncomfortable
Because we are uncomfortable
We live uncomfortable
We cope with that lack of comfort
We have hid our pain, despair and our truth
For too long!
Just to be accepted
Just to not be another black person complaining
Just to be seen as more and different
Not indifferent
Even at the cost of our own culture and dignity
But it made no difference
You still cant get past our skin
A color!
This thing that makes me only different in hue
This thing that makes everyone black,
Even if they are mixed,
Just because their darkened shade.
So while this is new to you
This is our everyday
Which we go to the mirror systematically-
Practicing our survivors facade and blending in guise
Each new morning
Before entering back into the world of color
As Doc Rivers just said
We love a country that doesn’t love us back
Why won’t you love us?!
Why won’t you love us?!
Why won’t you love me?…
Why do you judge us-
When we try to show personal pride in culture?
Why are you in such strong denial of our experience,
Returning back to your high vantage points
Only to continue looking down
Why do we assemble in peace and still you see us as aggressors?
Why do you see us in the practicing of our rights as pointless and ungrateful?
Why do you see our unity as aggressive?
Then when aggression finally outbreaks, you use it as justification for prior unsubstantiated Biased claims and assumptions you made long before the happening
Why are you against us?
Why are we so threatening to you?
What did we do?
What did black people do?
Why can’t you love us,
And not merely tolerate our existence?
What do we even have, to do anything with?
We don’t wear cloaks and masks
We don’t assemble at capitols with guns
We don’t stand on yards and aim guns at protestors
We don’t march with hate speech and tiki torches to towns
We don’t have militias
You wouldn’t even allow of a world where blacks could even begin to do these things
We don’t mass shoot people
We don’t normally fire on officers-we fear them!
So why the extreme reactions to us?
We don’t carry out vigilante justice and get passes for it
We don’t shoot up churches and synagogues
Then get the benefit of the doubt
Leaving with our lives
Even being driven to restaurants on the way to jail!
Ending in prison somehow is a luxury now afforded to us,
Instead of a coffin!
We get met with unjust assumption and brutality
That’s our reality!
And any excuse or reasonable logic you can surmise is only dumb, deaf and willfully blind
And equally dangerous in its complicity
We are tired…and this is what it looks like!
So if you are tired of seeing and hearing about it
Then become an ally, advocate, or activist
Or if that’s too much, yet you believe you’re not racist nor culpable
Then instead of judge
Get off your pedastool and help come up with solutions
So yaw can get right back on with your lives
Because ours has been a constant fight
Battles after battles
For a war that only white people can help us win!
Ironically the war for this country, blacks helped you win!
And the defeating truth in it is
Today,
The white community would never have to rely on any outside help or color to save themselves
But we do
And however undignified that is
Still we plead for your attention
Begging for your help!
We love this country
And still you don’t love us!
It’s 2020…
We live now what we learned in classroom history
That is a country wide failure
The fact that we are so cheap to you
Only valuing our bodies
Depreciating our minds
And discounting our contributions
While exploiting our culture
Making us nothing more than consumers
Being owned, sold and traded daily
But we should be so lucky
So lucky that 60% of black people live at or below the poverty line
That our contributions and way of life is largely owned and marketed by White America
That we are the intellectual property of high society
Having minimal rights to our own independence, creativity and ingenuity
Producing our creations with a white face and sound to make a product more consumable
But aye, we got paid for it right?
With our voices still stifled and our plight muffled
And your ears tuned out and eyes wide shut
Because your mind is fixed to see us as something beneath
Needing to be assisted
Basking in the handicaps you’ve systemically placed upon us
Assuring yourself always a place above something
Above someone
Above us…
Because how can you understand those you stand on
How can you pick up that which you stand on
And like has been said by Toni Morrison
How tall are you really, when you’re standing on somebody’s back
Somebody’s…not something
Somebody, more, than an object of your subjection
Money!
That is the barometer of change
Those who have it vs those whom don’t
Those that have it are most capable to effect change
While those who don’t, can only appeal to that dollar
Us broke and broken have cried out to the immortality of the American dollar
Us who have built this country and collectively own only a stark 1.8% of our own land
We have pleaded and died for gains in this country
We have conformed for your love, attention and promise of equality
But still we get nothing
Still we are unseen
Unheard
Unfelt
And barely sympathized
And empathized for
Yet overly rationalized
Objectified
And subjected
To the crass treatment of this country’s elite and preferred class and color
We have been puppeteered
And tap danced
To entertain you
And you have only accepted us as nothing more than that
Entertainment
When we attempt to succeed and speak beyond those boundaries
We are shunned
Stunted
And thwarted
Placed within skinny secluded and limited boundaries and paradigms
Of inclusion
Yet spoken against as if our lack of broad achievement is nothing more than our inability-
Given the equal chance we are offered
While routinely picked over
Supposedly being over or under qualified
And implicit bias being the improvable elephant in the room
The truth is
Our gain, is perceived as a direct threat to white Americans whom desire to protect their positions At the top of the ladder of decision and discernment in this american experience-
With it’s hopes and freedoms
We get decimated and exploited socially
Educationally
Psychologically
Politically
Procedurally
Systemically
Culturally
Geographically
Spiritually
Economically
And legislatively-
All throughout our legal system with the police, prosecutors, prisons and parole system
The problem is that money determines human value
And therefore scales us as necessary liabilities and expenditures
But unnecessary beneficiaries and unworthy proprietor’s
Limiting our potential for capital and stake in this country and in our own future
Money has largely determined our futures for us
People with money whom discern our experience and legitimize our limitations
Quelling our efforts with their resources
Once freed we weren’t given the keys to our own freedom
Only the illusion of
Change is sketched on a cost benefit analysis
Where loss is the metric for true change and gain
Yet loss is overly feared and acted against
Therefore making change rigid
If not improbable at best
With change comes along skin in the game-investment
And given our investment in this country we have the worst ROI in the history of mankind
We’ve always been on the wrong side of modern history with promises and gains
While people complain about money lost
We have been taking financial, bodily and providential hits for over 4 centuries
So we don’t wanna hear about money loss
We wanna see the money spent
Since we can’t fairly get a seat at the table and create our own wealth with equal opportunity
Because we have created more than enough equity and paid astronomically more than our Weight in gold to this country’s building and upkeep as leaders of the free world
We created the power and braggadocio able to be lived
Our sweat, blood and lives made way for the idea privilege and global hierarchy us Americans enjoy
Put up or shut up
Just like in business,
If you really want the real estate then money talks
You say we matter well show us
Because if the colors on this end of the spectrum were in contrast, uproar and a flood of money Would be thrown at the problem
If not all out societal bedlam given the entitled attitude of most white Americans
And the pocket checks is what tilts the checks and balances of this country
The lack of resources is the primary reason for crime rising in impoverished communities
So don’t look at our communities and scathe us with your uninformed judgement
Poverty creates crime
Disproportionate resources make that happening a more static reality because the cut off of Those resources needed is what keeps the status quo safe
It’s what keeps the suburbs looking down and at a distance from true iniquities and inequalities!
So in case you didn’t know where I was going with this
There’s a reason why the money is funneled up
And the pain and its oppressive instigators reign down and rain on the bottom of the ladder
Flooding the lowest of us
And no one seems to care until their ankles get wet
While we’re drowning in this country’s consistent wrongs to us
One of two of its biggest debtors that has yet to collect on what’s owed
It almost feels like this country is the crook looking down on the helplessness and gullibility of it’s victims
While we ask
Why are you doing this
And all you do is offer pennies to the dollar of what’s been stripped from us inside and out
And we can’t even sue for pain and suffering
Because you created the kangaroo court that will proceed in favor of your ill-gotten gains
Citing survival of the fittest, natural selection and irreconcilable differences saying it’s our fault
We shouldn’t have been suckers and allowed ourselves to fall prey to your carnivorous hunger and insatiable thirst
Smugly saying spoils of war, sore loser
You’ve kept us broke
You prefer us broken and at times succeeded
But you still can’t eliminate us
Because still we rise
And we are here and will remind you everyday that we will not remain forgotten
That we will not remain victims
And this country will know and acknowledge the pain we feel because we are done going away silently in the night
Being lost to political rhetoric and the convenience of another headline
We will be that inconvenient disruption to the everyday programmed schedules of your privilege and ignorance
The revolution will not only be televised and internalized
It’s inherited
So it will be expressed and externalized with gusto, with ferocious spirit and personal pride
Because bottom line
We’re more than a bottom line
But for change, we have to affect your bottom lines
Money…
I paint moments and put them in poetry
cuz if I rapped it most would attack it and see me as a mass of blacks packed in the back of the lower class seeking fast cash braggin about designer fashion bags veiling interior baggage, your interest had me catfished! cuz I’m not the preferred status or catholic with chapstick ready to latch my lips to your ass-kissed, like toiletries..
so I paint moments in poetry
hoping you will focus and notice me
My poetry, depending on how its said can sound like rap, but rap, depending on how its said can sound like poetry. And so can country rock r and b folk and indie and any other song writing…its about expression, but what carries it is the personal views and perceptions of those that read it. Some prefer me in a box and grateful, while others encourage me seeing how I am like so many more and my voice along with others can help bring a new wave and generation of society socially…Love is lost because hate is so easy. You don’t find love in the dictionary, you only get its name there.
The things we try to over explain with the absence of experience, how can you explain prison if you’ve never lived it or if you don’t realize this prison of self? We dilute effect and understanding without empathy and experience. Its not lost on me that I am a black felon, and how that’s not a surprising sentence, title, or identity. What also isn’t lost on me is that in have the tools to change these perception because I am educated, perceptive, and talented enough to help change the narratives, openly wearing my flaws and heart in plain sight to encourage many more.
Don’t walk away from me
don’t build a fortress
and forest
our fortune
forcing
our forfeit
forgive me for my
informal forums
forages
I wish I could jump from the knowing
in mid-wonder
diving into the deepest mystery
treading vast possibilities
but I can’t swim
so reality
is where I land
no questions asked with every step
on sure, mundane, monotonous ground
unknowing of the unknown
ignorance,
the enemy of bliss
prisoned innocence
prison, in a sense
The fact that it takes belief
to believe,
shows an essence of
trust,
trust me.
I hope
you trust
my faith
in our fate
but I need you
to
believe
me
first
trust me.
Therein
lies
belief
in us,
by
gaining
trust.
I’m more than I know
less what you think
can’t give myself credit
yet, obsessed with critique
I find worth in process
I am a working product
I am a work in progress
my poetic work is promise
I am product
process
progress
promise
I am Profit.
I miss this
smell- intoxicating aroma
touch- honey milk softened skin
taste- nectar oozing off tongue and lips
sound- harmonic pitch
sight- visions only explained in dreams
You take up my senses
You make sense
Ever since, our disconnect
I’ve been senseless
Impression felt
lasting impressions
dig deep
hold on
tight
tattoo my flesh
with the pressure of must
have,
in your finger tips
exuding raw love
for us
fighting hard
to never let go
never let go
scar me
with burning passion
absorbed by
french manicured need..
nails,
my skin flares
then fileted
giving way
to will
fear has no feat
when feeling
is unexplainably deep
these moments
when rush of pain
symbolizes
infallible love
-symbiotic, love and pain-
sometimes, you can’t chance, taking a certain stance, in certain circumstances
“Sir, come stand”
go head..search my stance