WHEN I WAS A CHILD...

when I was a child

 I was sheltered

from the violence.

I was sheltered

from this time and place.

I was kept safe

from My own curiosity

about a people and way

of real, obsessive hate,

kept home

under protective eyes

and cushioned

behind padded walls,

by a community

masking fear

and pretending rebellion.

Oblivious, I played,

played hard

in the arms

of an Afrika unrecognized,

in the spirit

and arms

of a people

and space

of natural, disciplined love

amid a clear vision

of dreams undeferred.

I expected

an honest world.

I expected

a morally clean

and ethically grounded

social reality,

a world

where individuals

used golden rules

to measure

their integrity

and godliness.

I expected

good

to overcome evil

of its own accord;

unwittingly,

I expected Ma'at.

I assumed

that life reflected art,

pure, original,

hand carved, ebony art.

I assumed

that one's eyes

must reveal

one's soul

because I was told

that humans

did not lie

to lie.

I believed

in the heart

and soul

of white people.

Even while

we joked

over their

absence of rhythm

and rhyme,

I still believed.

I believed

We were all human

in the heart,

all the same

under the skin,

all equally human.

I truly believed

in the spirit

of universoul brotherhood

I felt comforted

in the notion

of peace on earth

goodwill to all men.

I felt comforted

cradled in

the progression of

liberal/open-minded and civilizing

western ideas and machines.

I felt the comfort

of a stupor –

relaxed,

without care.

I felt eased in

being at home,

in this place made safe

by democracy's wars.

I made believe

that one day

I, too,

would fight

as one

of the few

the proud

government issue,

that one day

I, too,

would be allowed

to save them

from themselves

as Wesley and Denzel and Will

have been allowed

to pretend.

I felt comforted

by the pledges

of liberty and justice

for all.

I recited them

from My heart.

I experienced justice

in mason's and matlock's court

where we were

served and protected

even though

we had no

true representation

as judge, jury, defendant or victim.

All in all

I knew

that I was free

and they brave

even though

I understood neither

power nor courage.

I sensed sure direction

in my aspiration

to be honored

and loved by

a people

who

claimed humanity

and

allocated salvation.

I saw

insanity

as sanity.

I even sensed love

and emotional content

in their distance.

I sensed

that any change

toward them

was corrective

and life-giving.

I believed

in the sermons

and conditioned passivity

of those

calling us

from behind black & white

"dog collars"

to love our enemies

to forgive our enemies

to forget ourselves

and accept destruction,

to cling to belief

impossibly beyond ourselves,

to save ourselves

for otherworldly salvation.

I believed that

the self-denial

of righteous rage

begot power,

that abstinence

against correcting

historical wrongs

bespoke

a higher manhood.

I believed

they were trying

to save my soul

from itself.

I sought solace

in the arms

of negroes/negoettes,

lost souls

championing justice

for all [others].

Solace came from

the belief that

others' justice

would bring our justice

out of a staged fantasy

where a few bad

apples donned sheets

and ignorance of wickedness

was their only fault.

I sought solace

in the goodness

of isolated, deliberate,

nation-serving, individual

european acts of "kindness."

I bet my energy

on excellence.

I bet my sanity

on a victimizing socialization

promising an upward mobility

judged by merit.

I bet that

these managers of chaos

would not see me

for the way I was,

that they would be forced

through the brilliance of

my act

to at least

grant me

a privileged invisibility.

I bet

that I could become

colorlessly happy

or,

if all else failed,

a black and proud

favorite.

But, instead,

I was led

along a path

where I stumbled,

where i stumbled again,

and again and again and again and again

over the piles of lies

and contradictions

left in clear view.

i discovered

I was wrong,

dead wrong

about

my expectations

my assumptions

my beliefs

my comforts

my sensing

my securities

my bets

my self.

So i learned

to watch.

And i grew.

i studied our truth.

i found remembrance.

i cried.

i raged.

i mastered self.

i acted accordingly.

i discovered

that safety

and security

in a place

that fed

on my spirit's death

was illusionary.

i discovered

that an

unprepared, stunted

maturity

left me open

to attack

from within

and without.

i discovered

that spoilage

gave free passage

on new slave ships

and old brutalities.

i discovered

that death

is not life.

i realized

that the drive

of empty,

pale, smiling,

lipless, fearful,

powerless "people"

to masochistically sterilize themselves

was a conscious effort

to conceal

their manifest destiny

as carriers

of chaos

and disease.

i found

out why

lies were told;

i found out

about fairies' tails.

i learned

why i believed them.

i understood

i was not them

nor they i.

i had

no conception

of soullessness.

They embodied it.

i finally

recognized death

and learned

to live

without it.

Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti

"when i was a child"

in Battle Plan