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| I am the last of a line..... |
DEAR DIARY
i am the last of a line
it stops here with me
this is where the estuary
of an African slave ends
no children, as yet, to pass the blood on
to flow over the smoothed rocks
of an ancestors foundation
last of a line, a woman
with a story of multiple life stories
of how we came to be here
of how this world's history branded me,
an old empire coughed me out
of its system as I squirmed, a free radical
that came into its own,
by detoxing self aberration, to sight
myself with eyes of love and becoming
the thorn in the throat of a giant, a clot
needing surgical removal,
from the brain of cultural tyranny,
oppressing, my sex, my skin, gifting me
with rebelliousness in words and art.
I am the last of a line
standing here, as a writer, storyteller
and i invite you, as friend (you can 'unlike' me later)
i invite you along the journey of a self, soul,
an artist, a woman, a human, a cliche,
a label, an icon a stereotype, a problem,
an infestation, a migration, an exotic, negrotic,
a slave, a negra, a breeder, a nigger,
a mammy, a maid, a matriarch with no human rights,
a golly, a wog, a coloured, a black, a negro (empowered)
a niggah bitch, a ho yet Mother to the the world
a Queen, my own logo, with an askewed crown
a dichotomy of existence knotted into my frown
schizophrenic with possibilities
and still STILL, as i reconcile my status as the last
i try to pin it down, this 'I, me, self"
so i look to my left
to my father, bereft of the familiarity of his breath
to my right, to stand in the light
and shade of my mothers lashes
as she blinks the ash from my eyes
that i might see Woman
and smile at her from the mouth of overstanding,
into the depths of her whirling and drum
flying dreds and pussy song
to the food in the veins of beasts and babies full grown
from the milk of her Soul and sated gravaliscious libido.
Maybe being the last is better thing
than I've believed in the past
the legacy cuts deep
gripped open at the edges by fragments
of memories, holding on so not fall back
into bright brutal cycle of re-memory
of a blood line interrupted
the buck stops, starts here
written by Zena Edwards 2011©
Virtually all of Travelling light has been devised and inspired from diary entries which I have kept since I was a young girl. Some are verbatim Click to go directly to more show extracts on the TL's blog.
