Black Boy Poems

by Tyson Amir

  I am not stating money is irrelevant; money is a very important resource. Capital is an essential factor of production necessary for many things. However, if you acquire capital by preying on segments of your community, you're simply regurgitating what the masters of our system have done and are doing. Or if you have racks and racks of money with no knowledge of self and your people, then your wealth won't really profit you. The conquered began to take on the characteristics of the conqueror. What was slavery? It was M.O.B., “Money over black lives.” What are mass incarceration and the exploitation of black bodies in the hood? They are C.R.E.A.M. Forget helping folks with problems they have because "Cash rules everything around me." The more locked up, the more money they make. Those in control profit off the prison industrial complex and the poverty in our communities. What is it when police terrorize black and brown communities and use lethal force to extinguish black lives? That's “mind on my money and money on my mind.” Police forces are being used to protect the property and wealth of the wealthy. The wealthy got their mind on their money and use the police as a private security force to keep their property and money safe.

  If it doesn't look good when the oppressor uses it, then how can it be good when we mimic the same behavior? And just like America uses cognitive dissonance to justify its treatment of blacks, we do the same thing to justify when we prey on our own to get what we need. You'll hear mantras like, "pimping and hoeing is the best thing going" to justify prostituting women and men. The business of turning a mother, sister, daughter or father, brother, and son into a commodity to be bought and sold for the sole purpose of sexual pleasure. Or "Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks" to justify denigrating women. Or “The hypes/knocks/fiends will get their dope from somewhere, might as well be me.” To justify selling dope to your own people. Or she just a t.h.o.t., “that hoe over there,” to again justify disrespecting women. He a "bitch nigga" or "fuck boy" to justify disrespecting other men. The cognitive dissonance works from the oppressor to the oppressed, but also when the oppressed who have been victimized by their oppression lash out and begin to oppress their fellow oppressed peoples; instead of lashing out against those responsible for their oppression. This is exactly what our environment expects of us.

  We know the system is not going to change, then how do we combat this? We have to learn in order to grow and create institutions that uplift and allow others to grow as well. We can't simply recycle the same pathological paradigm that has resulted in our destruction. The condensed version of that paradigm is undervaluing others for the sake of profit over everything else. That's what white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, and the American way has been all about. We cannot take the same poison and think we'll thrive off of it.

  “The Rose” attempts to capture that as well as celebrate our struggles and our uniqueness as survivors. The reality has to be firmly planted within us that we have to tend our own garden. I spend so much time writing material focused on the struggles of my people because we are the ones who this system is constantly devouring. We cannot rely on the very thing that is killing us to save us. That's asinine. There is no logic or hope in such an approach. In seeking to do something different, the first thing we must do is arm ourselves with proper information. We have a responsibility to ourselves and our progeny to stand up and fight. We have to recognize that we have power; we're still under a repressive regime but there is room for empowerment and positive self-growth. There is no fighting back without seizing control of our means of production and educating ourselves. An ignorant mind is a controllable mind. We cannot fight back being paralyzed by ignorance, so one of the first essential step is quality mass education. We have to empower ourselves through education. Once we do this, we can begin to take matters into our own hands and start to fight back and make this a beautiful struggle.

  "The Dirge" (2014)

  You hear the dirge of the funeral march

  as the band plays on

  and my heart instantly recognizes it as the same song

  played since the days of slave songs

  which means I'm going to stand here until the flame is gone

  or the pain is gone

  because I don't know how many more names like Oscar and Trayvon

  we'll have to play it for.

  The populous doesn't watch out for us

  nor acknowledge us

  they simply dismiss our cries for help as obnoxious

  until they're presented to them in a form worthy of being nominated for an oscar

  by some Academy for the best actor and score.

  But sadly

  the madness that maddens me

  and the savagery that surrounds me

  in the streets that we inhabit be

  growing exponentially evermore.

  Four score and some odd years ago

  man, I can't even keep score

  if there is a scoreboard of how many of our loved ones

  became extinct and are now no more

  just that simple thought makes me want to cry

  until my tear ducts are sore,

  or scream until my voice and vocal chords become hoarse

  the only lawful alternative is to

  unleash this force through verse

  capable of leaving pages and earth scorched

  because the truth hurts

  that to them we are nothing more.

  How many more Amadou Diallos and Abner Louimas

  but it's been foretold

  since the days of The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria

  or 1619 when the first 19 of us got off

  or should I say got lost

  involuntarily drafted into this American Holocaust

  you ask about the cost

  it can't be computed by some consumer price index

  We go from slavery to Jim Crow

  to prison industrial complex

  punctuated by a death sentence,

  sentenced to reside in a land

  where they rally behind stand your ground,

  which in layman's terms we know means another nigger down.

  Translated to black speak

  we know it means it's open season on us now.

  Can y'all feel that adrenaline rush now?

  But I need y'all to hush now

  Listening carefully

  because the world is changing right now

  while we are busy entertaining

  skinny jeans sagging on corners hanging

  Molly popping and boat sipping

  weed smoking and banging

  they have crosshairs trained

  on an entire generation.

  They have prisons cells and guns aimed

  at an entire generation.

  Deemed expendable is

  an entire generation.

  The government does not care about

  an entire generation.

  We are the only ones who care about

  an entire generation.

  Therefore, we are the only ones who can save

  an entire generation.

  __________________________________________________________________________

  Reflections of a Black Boy

  There are moments when I sit and attempt to reflect on all the people I know who have been gobbled up by the streets, slaughtered by police or swallowed by jails and prisons. I honestly cannot count. If I was to limit it to one of these categories, I still wouldn't be able to count. In my brief time on this planet I've seen far too much and it's not like I was raised in the hardest of hoods. I had parents and an extended community that tried to protect me from all of that but there is no place blackness can be in America and not be touched by these morbid realities.

  Everyday black babies are born. The world that they are pushed into is rigged with traps ready to snare them. As they grow, they find their spot on this capitalistic conveyor belt moving them towards the awful destinations awaiting them at the end of their black lives.

 
__________________________________________________________________________

  Today is Dec. 28, 2015. I'm sitting in my studio on the border of West Oakland and Emeryville, California typing away at my book, Black Boy Poems. West Oakland is the birthplace of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. In 2016, we will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the party. There is a spiritual and political power pulsating beneath the surface here. If you know how to sit quiet and listen for it, you can hear it. I know I'm tapped into the frequency, and I can feel the energy of the Panthers every time I'm here, especially when I step outside my door and let my feet travel concrete and asphalt paths that those freedom fighters and revolutionaries before me trod. I think about October 1966 and what Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Bobby Hutton must've been looking at when they formed the Black Panthers. Whatever was in the street, in the air, or in the water, you can still catch traces of it despite COINTELPRO and other government attempts to destroy the spirit of the Panthers and Oakland.

  I mentioned the date Dec. 28 because it's significant for two reasons. One, it's the birthday of one of my good friends, Ise Lyfe. Two, about an hour ago I started to receive social media notifications about a grand jury returning a decision of no indictment for officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback for the unlawful murder and execution of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

  I'll give a brief synopsis of the events surrounding the murder of Tamir for those who don't know. Tamir was playing with a toy gun at Cudell Recreation Center, a park in Cleveland, Ohio, when a call came in reporting a "guy with a gun." The caller noted that the gun was probably "a toy." The dispatcher took the call and sent the word out to police in the area. Officers Loehmann and Garmback responded and immediately proceeded to the scene. They located Tamir and drove right up to the boy, and within two seconds of Loehmann exiting his police cruiser, he began to fire the fatal shots that resulted in Tamir's death.

  This led to a media firestorm. In the aftermath, reports were produced that said Loehmann had a personnel file filled with concerns about his performance on the job from his previous employer in Independence, Ohio. The deputy police chief of Independence, Jim Polak, said that, "Loehmann had resigned rather than face certain termination due to concerns that he lacked the emotional stability to be a police officer." Polak also said Loehmann was not able to follow, "basic functions as instructed" and he showed a "dangerous loss of composure" during weapons trainings. Polak said many other things about Loehmann in stating his lack of confidence in his ability as a police officer, but he summed up his vote of no confidence in Loehmann by saying, "Individually, these events would not be considered major situations, but when taken together they show a pattern of a lack of maturity, indiscretion, and not following instructions. I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies."

  All of this was present in Loehmann's personnel file, which the Cleveland Police Department apparently felt was a plus for him as an officer in Cleveland, or they completely ignored his previous commanding officer's warnings and hired him anyway. Immediately after Tamir's murder, Loehmann was telling investigators that he and his colleague had told Tamir multiple times to drop the gun and that Tamir reached for his gun, which prompted him to fire the fatal shots. Video evidence strongly contradicted his accounting of events when footage indicated that Loehmann's weapon was fired within two seconds of him exiting the car. With all of this evidence to support Tamir's death being an unauthorized use of deadly force by a person who never should've been an officer in the first place, a grand jury in Cuyahoga County was somehow able to render a "fair" and "impartial" decision of no indictment. I'm being slightly sarcastic to make this point, but all the evidence against Loehmann was the equivalent of God on high coming down to state Loehmann was the killer and it was unjust. Still, the system found a way to exonerate a white cop killing a black child. That is the system doing what it always does.

  I wrote this piece upon invitation to perform at an event honoring the lives of young men and women we've lost due to state-sponsored violence. In attendance were family members of our famous fallen; the list of attendees was as follows:

  Emmett Till's Family

  Oscar Grant's Family

  Kerry Baxter's Family

  Mario Romero's Family

  James Rivera's Family

  Gregory Johnson's Family

  Alan Blueford's Family

  Donovan Jackson's Family

  Andy Lopez's Family

  Jose Calderon's Family

  Attending an event like this gives sobering clarity to the amount of terror and murder our communities have experienced. We gather in our spaces to grieve collectively for our fallen. The saddest part about this list is that it's a modest list. We have so many fallen that it becomes hard to keep track of our dead. The invitation is what put my mind in the space to conjure up this piece. I was reflecting on how expendable we've been deemed by our society. Just recently, I attended another such gathering here in Oakland at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the list of attendees read like a Hall of Fame of mourning families. I was asked by Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, Oscar Grant's uncle, to perform a few spoken word pieces at this event to give voice to the experience of our people. That day I heard from the mothers and fathers of Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Sandra Bland, Sean Bell, Tamir Rice, Oscar Grant, Alan Blueford, and so many others. A cousin of Emmett Till’s was in attendance as well. I don't know how you can put more heartache and pain into one room. When you hear these parents, spouses, and family members speak, you hear real pain. Authentic, pure, direct from the deepest regions of the heart and soul. When you hear those words, you can't help but be shaken to your core. I won't speak for all who attended, but hearing those stories and knowing the system has done nothing to hold any of the murderers accountable was enough to make any sane person contemplate armed rebellion. These families and their beloved fallen are the evidence of the war being waged on our people.

  We listened to the stories of these mothers and fathers. We heard directly from their own mouths how much they've been hurt and changed by their loss. Their words connected directly with our hearts as they cried loudly for justice, revolution, and change. Surprisingly, in the shadow of death, this community of bereaved mothers and fathers had grown to provide support for one another. The bedrock of that support was their faith. You might believe in God; you might not, but faith in a higher power, yourself, or the struggle is a necessary armament to carry with you as you walk through this battlefield. The power of their faith has helped them become soldiers in a fight for justice for their loved ones and the survival of our people. The fight must take place because our society has deemed us worthless. Black bodies shot down by police and left on the street to rot for hours before any "authority" official does anything. No attempts to revive or save the life, only dismissive glances and disgusted faces as life bleeds out of the body. We are worth nothing in their eyes; the black life is barcoded with the cheapest of UPC coding for human beings. As a result, we live and die so fast. A poem that has always haunted me because of it poignancy is from Gwendolyn Brooks. In her piece titled “We Real Cool,” she wrote:

  “We real cool

  we left school

  we lurk late

  we strike straight

  we sing sin

  we thin jinn

  we jazz june

  we die soon”

  The totality of the piece captures the grim nature of the black life. We die so soon and so often, leaving our loved ones to bury and mourn our passing. The last line of the poem always catches me because early death is the scary repeated reality for blacks in America.

  In my neighborhood I often make the walk to the worker owned cooperative Arizmendi for a slice of pizza. On my way back I pass by an elementary school and kids are normally playing sports in some after school activity. The majority of those children are black. I sincerely hate the fact that some of these precious, beautiful children are destin
ed to fill spaces in the most unwanted statistical categories that define black life. If I look closely enough I can see specters of death, cops, and prison wardens hovering in the background waiting to snatch a few of them up. What does one say to a young black innocent child filled with all the hopes, dreams, and potential of their people, but due to genetic factors beyond anyone's control, their chances at life are drastically reduced?

  To put reduced life chances into context we'll examine numbers from three sources: the BJS, Violence Policy Center (VPC), and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). According to the BJS in 2008 the national "homicide victimization rate for blacks (19.6 homicides per 100,000) was 6 times higher than the rate for whites (3.3 homicides per 100,000)." The report goes on to say the national "victimization rate for blacks peaked in the early 1990s, reaching a high of 39.4 homicides per 100,000 in 1991." In 2016 the VPC published its most recent Black Homicide Victimization in the United States report on data from 2013. The report states the national "homicide rate among black victims in the United States was 16.91 per 100,000 … For whites, the national homicide rate was 2.54 per 100,000." Making blacks about eight times more likely to be killed than whites. In addition, the top ten states for black homicide per 100,000 are as follows: Indiana (34.15), Missouri (30.42), Michigan (30.34), Nebraska (27.65), Oklahoma (27.36), Pennsylvania (26.11), Wisconsin (24.74), Louisiana (23.33), California (21.79), and New Jersey (20.49). These numbers put black murder on par with countries that are designated so called "war zones" or "developing" which means western countries expect murder to occur more often in these places. The UNODC report Global Study on Homicide details homicides rates in all countries. Black murder rates are similar to murder rates in countries such as: Colombia (30.8), Democratic Republic of the Congo (28.3), Brazil (25.2), Dominican Republic (22.1), and Nigeria (20.0). These numbers clearly indicate that blacks live and die in a completely separate world from whites.