I am the Rage Read online

  It scares you

  A mysterious blend of several African nations

  And multiple European countries

  Coalesced to make you and me

  We are sentenced to be locked into invisible battles

  Fighting on two fronts

  A plague of disease

  A plague of the heart

  In your blindness

  You do not see

  Or you do see me and fail to understand me

  Or understand and refuse to acknowledge me

  That the upward or downward trajectory of this nation

  Our America

  Depends on the fate you have in store for me

  Is there a retrospective guide we can point to

  For finding the way forward

  Have we passed the mark of turning or the point of tipping

  Lost in our never-­ending whorl of degradation and denigration

  We are alike

  You and I

  As you shove me aside

  And lock me down

  You do the same damage to yourself

  Everything you have done to destroy me

  You have done to your nation

  Yourself

  Your children

  You cannot shoot me without seeing me

  You cannot push me without touching me

  You cannot spit on me without droplets of the same venomous slaver finding its way back to your face

  You cannot hate me without seeing that beneath the color, I am you

  You cannot lynch me without feeling the bite of the rope on your dirty hands

  You cannot shun me without leaving a hole in your world

  A testament to what your forefathers made

  The strongest of us

  Each in our own way

  And as a testimony to the acrimonious history we share

  We will come for you

  Not with clubs

  Or tear gas

  Or firebombs

  But with words

  We are alike

  You and I

  And until you see this with clarity

  This grand democracy we call home

  This nation

  Will never cease to burn

  In the fires of hatred

  Licking and caressing its wounds

  Nursing its hurt pride

  Shoring up its damaged spirits

  We will be with you until the end of time

  BIPOC

  Sitting on a powder keg

  Or in a cage

  Waiting for the spark to ignite

  Still trying to interpret the illegible runes of

  How Black and Brown peoples are ineligible for a life of Liberty

  Doors bolted shut

  To keep us from

  Stretching too far

  Or reaching too high

  Or overstepping the prescribed lines demarcated in the ever-­shifting sands

  The amorphous borders of the lives we are allowed to live

  What will it take

  How many lives need to be lost

  How much blood has to be spilled

  To buy back our freedom

  A thing, like our bodies, You had no right to own

  And as You push back

  Ever-­faithful in reminding us that we are not human

  Not really like You

  Can never become You

  Even though we have no desire to be

  Now calling us BIPOCs

  A different kind of beast

  A euphemism

  An abstraction that simply means

  Not white

  Or not white enough

  Spoken Words Fail Me But…

  Although words often seem to fail me when I try to speak

  The writing still comes by instinct

  An instinct long-­buried

  Not safe for polite society

  Breaking out of the cookie-­cutter mold of being a well-­mannered possession

  A slave to what makes others feel comfortable

  I plumb the depths of a pain we are afraid to speak

  And take repossession of a spirit lost in financial serfdom

  Temporarily casting our outward-­facing selves into obsolescence

  Acknowledging the absolute logic of our tears

  and agony

  and outrage

  Showing the unseemly details, the horrific density of the lives we live

  We inadvertently open a new chapter of misery and degradation

  And open old, unhealed wounds

  Again

  Our true spirits struggling to wriggle out of its safe space

  No longer hidden from a world that wishes us

  gone

  But take heart

  We will disappear from your sight again

  In a few months

  This broken world will return to business as usual

  And our ambiguous losses will still be lost

  Our freed spirits will once again

  be locked in amber

  Awaiting release in another age of outrage

  Cultural Upheaval

  As we ponder the next steps in our cultural overhaul

  The scholars and artist souls are set ablaze

  By a deluge of material that keeps us one step

  Away from both insanity and utter despair

  The crude and rude treatment repeatedly visited

  With a violence and a vengeance

  that leaves us breathless and confused

  We go through the mechanical motions of our crafts

  And inevitably come crashing back to the earth

  And struggle with the mundanity of everyday life

  What makes us crafters special

  Also makes us strange

  Riven from the hoods of our hearts

  We remain intertwined with the struggles of our people

  Alas, we too fit the profile

  And will, in time

  Be destroyed

  Today, I Cannot…

  Today, I cannot come out to play with You

  It simply hurts too much

  Today I cannot push down the pain

  The hurt

  And the grief

  Of the disheartening losses and daily devaluation of human lives

  Today I cannot write or paint without crying

  Filled with rage and fear because it never ends

  Because it never ends

  Because it never ends

  Today I cannot go exploring with my guild-­mates destroying monsters

  Because

  Apparently, I am a monster

  Or I look a lot like one

  Today I cannot stop thinking about

  Ahmaud (jogging)

  Breonna (sleeping)

  Steven (going to work)

  George (knelt upon)

  Chico (raising his hands in surrender)

  And the injustices we have all endured

  Who is next?

  Me?

  My children?

  My nephews?

  Today I cannot act as if I am one of You,

  And that the world is not on fire

  I am not one of You

  I am one of “them”

  Today I cannot pretend that I have never been

  Detained

  Accosted

  Mistaken for someone else

  Belittled

  Overlooked

  Bypassed

  Segregated against

  Denied access

  Required to sh
ow extra ID

  Watched the light go out in someone’s eyes when they discover that I am Black

  Aware of the rank odor of fear exuding from my pores

  Felt the constant need to look over my shoulder

  Assess my surroundings

  Living in a world where I am more terrified of dying while doing ordinary things

  Than I am of dying of this deadly plague

  Worried and constantly checking my posture, my tone, my expression so that I do not

  Seem too large, too dark, or too threatening

  Even though I am righteously angry and grieve for people who thought there was still an inherent promise of tomorrow, or some other (fucking) fairy tale

  Today I cannot

  Paint in bright colors while the world is locked into struggles of

  Black and Brown and Racism

  Blue and Red

  Nor write the tortured verses of Haiku,

  Without mentioning the black and blue hues of my pain

  Or act like the world makes sense and appear to be well-­behaved

  In a world that looks at me

  and sees something distinctly “other” and/or “less than”

  Something in desperate need of annihilation

  Maybe tomorrow I can come out to play with You

  Hiding behind the fraudulently color-blind screen

  But today

  I cannot bear it

  What Sadness We Carry in Ordinary Times

  What sadness we carry in ordinary times

  Deep within our breasts

  Our hearts threatening to burst

  What sadness we carry in ordinary times

  Told to breathe

  It will make everything better or, at least, make it more tolerable

  And gaining no relief

  When we say we cannot

  Breathe inside this thick and foul fog of hatred

  What sadness we carry in ordinary times

  When we hold vigils to honor our dead

  Being held in check by people dressed in riot gear

  With tear gas bombs, flash-­bang grenades, pepper spray, and bullets

  Real bullets

  While we hold poster ­board and cardboard signs

  as our only shields against mutilation and death

  What sadness we carry in ordinary times

  Beaten with state-­sanctioned clubs

  Electrified and stunned into submission with taser guns

  Punched with clenched and outraged fists

  seeking a target to shatter

  Lit up with rubber bullets

  Because we are not happy

  And we are outside our own homes when the sun retreats

  What sadness we carry in ordinary times

  When the hot wax of candles drip onto our hands

  Reminding us that we are

  Still

  Alive

  Regrettably

  What sadness we carry in ordinary times

  Releasing balloons to honor the fallen

  Attempting to release our pain into the firmament

  Only to find them trampled in the streets a few blocks away or lost at sea

  And we still carry the pain

  What sadness we carry in ordinary times

  When we reach out to the cosmos thinking we too are one with it

  Discovering that we are instead

  an unfortunate parody of mixed but not blended peoples

  Vilified by all

  Trying to raise a thin wheal of hope for our children

  What sadness we carry in ordinary times

  Because

  No matter how gruesome the travesties

  How egregious the atrocities

  How ludicrous the explanations

  How high the body count

  And

  even though we STILL, STILL, STILL cannot breathe

  These are,

  after all,

  for us,

  only ordinary times.

  Acknowledgments

  To my daughter and my best friend, Amanda, who listens to my stories and poems with great patience, gives honest feedback, but more importantly, lends unwavering support to my projects. To her daughter, who reads with me, introducing me to new writers, and makes the best faces when she does not like something.

  To my father, who taught me about love in the short time we were together.

  To Mary Anne Radmacher, for her encouragement, resourcefulness, friendship, and holding my feet to the fire.

  To Sweetie Berry (and her family) for being friend and strategist.

  To my writing group, Údar Anam Cara, for sharing their work while supporting mine.

  To everyone on the Sourcebooks team: Dominique Raccah, book publisher, for taking a chance on a first-­time writer; Meg Gibbons, my editor, for making the process simple; Todd Stocke, editorial director, for his editorial comments and suggestions; and everyone else involved with birthing this first book, even though I do not know your names…yet.

  To my extended family, friends, and coworkers who have supported me knowingly and unintentionally.

  About the Author

  Martina McGowan, MD, is about effective engagements in life. A physician (gynecology) who has spent a lifetime engaging formidable opponents, she has been a victim of and an advocate against social, racial, and sexual injustices, a participant in school desegregation and integration, and a physician serving women who have been victims as well as heroines in the war on women. Effectiveness means pushing through glass ceilings and perceived limitations of others. Whether conversation is about social and racial injustice, personal development, spiritual enlightenment, or her grandchildren’s favorite books, she’s about becoming involved wherever she finds herself. A writer, a potter, an artist, a leader at work and within her community, Martina believes in the example of decide, learn, do, improve as you go. She enjoys traveling, reading, and speaking, as well as copious amounts of laughter with family and friends. She feels that the most valuable skill in life is learning to listen.

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