Africa Day – May 25

BLACK LIVES STILL MATTER

Raucously, they entered the ICE train in Freiburg 
Happy to have made it just in time,
They sit behind her
Who is somewhere, 
daydreaming, 
an infectious smile on her face,
The face of a child seeing its mother in the air
long years since she’s been gone.

She opens her eyes to the sound of the short-of-breath chatter
smiling in recognition at that human pleasure 
of making the train just before the doors slam shut
the whistle shrilling doom 
for those still pounding the platform,
their luggage now dreadful baggage.

As the train begins to move,
She recognizes the change in air pressure
As the boisterous buoyancy of those who just made the train,
begins to turn into a rumble of shock, 
a tumbling building,
on the once-raucous bunch.

The black hole of inherited ancestral fear
churns with unrelenting force
she can feel its gravitational pull 
gravity making everything about it dance a mad dance
from the center of the milky way
seducing the gullible with its human whiteness

She listens with dread
At  the loud burp of the one behind her 
who has sucked long and hard
at the tit of white supremacy
as she calls on the white gods of travel.
Her call to her ancestors, she announces,
Is because the last time she traveled,
a black cat crossed her path and
her journey was a disaster.

The black hole at the center of the milky way
churns its racist gravity, 
pulling hard as she listens to a grown woman’s voice 
grow in panic, angled for the slightest sign 
that the Black Cat in seat 56
Feels the roar of fear roiling at the center of the milky way 
as the tit of white supremacy 
regurgitates the sour milk of human whiteness.

She who seats at seat 56
closes her eyes and feels centuries of sorrow
the deep hole at the heart of the one
who speaks fearfully of black cats 
with no speck of white to assure luck.

She at seat 56 takes in slow deep breaths
As her statuette pose exudes no sign of recognition
That this Black Cat understands the insult
Belching toxic gases out of the milky way 
in the seat behind her. Instead,

the Black Cat lets in the memory 
of the deep belly laugh she
once shared with her mother 
as they witnessed a panicked woman wind up her window
at the sight of two light beings in black bodies 
waiting to cross Michigan Ave 
in Chicago’s Magnificent Mile

Two light beings in black bodies
Oozing joy at the gift of being alive 
and sharing a moment of communion,
laughter, and love, 
between mother and daughter 
Soul sisters.

What a shame, the Black Cat thinks 
smoothing her whiskers,
I could have made me some friends on this European train
but for the need of a white speck 
acknowledgment that an inherited racial insult was understood
and so soothe the privileged discomfort of those
in need of the superstition
of white supremacy. 

May I become a witch,
so I can love people out of their superstitions
that blackness portends bad luck
on this planet Earth swirling in the blackness of space
while all Earthlings safe
in our corner of the Milky Way Galaxy.