Unfinished?

Yet again I've changed my mind about what I would post on this blog.  I have several titles and portions of blog posts stored in the drafts section of this blog.  I was going to write about observations I've made of behavior on social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, but when I was looking through my poetry notebook tonight to add a poem to my poetry blog, I noticed an unfinished poem I'd started.  I don't know if it will lie dormant and unfinished or whether a lightning strike of ideas will come and I will extend it. 

The unfinished poem I was looking at has the title "Dear Sisters".  It's basically a letter to African-American women, my sisters on the African continent, and my other sisters in other parts of the so-called Third World, the places that have been colonized and raped repeatedly for several centuries now, the places where the lie was put out that the people must be civilized even though they had already been civilized centuries before.  Individuals and whole civilizations are conditioned into low self-esteem and self-destruction, so in my own tiny way with my few abilities I want to cut some links in the chain.  

I will say here and now, I do not and have never considered myself to be a feminist.  I am not a middle class white woman.  A one size fits all white, American, northwestern European female template is not the remedy for all women on this planet.  In some of our cultures, far back, especially in African cultures, women already had strength and the right kind of freedom.  Debauchery and chaos is not freedom.  Being liberated into self-destruction and shame is not freedom. Losing the essence and nature of a female to become a pseudo-male is not freedom.  Emasculating your men is not freedom. Morals, intellect, grace, dignity, appreciation of beauty, wisdom, maturity, sense of duty without complaint are all the things our foremothers had.  We didn't have to be taught by a European woman how to live. So why this questioning and confusion about who we really are and what we can be?  We already IS. We don't have to be taught.

I've seen how the women's liberation model has in some ways been a catastrophe in the African-American community. Our family structure has dissolved itself.  Many African-American women feel they don't need a man.  We feel we can go it always alone and don't need protection.  And now we have no protection as a group now.  A war hasn't killed our men like it has in some places, but in America there has been and still is a special and secret war. Not too long ago I read a comment on an article about black male and female relationships posted by a racist troll who said that no one wanted black women and that we are so "butt ugly" that even our own men were abandoning us for white women. When I see or read the blatant and see the subtle racism, I go more within myself and realize the dangers to my people and others.  This country and the world is not post-racial. That disingenuous slogan about here and if it is applied anywhere is laughable and highly dangerous.


I started rediscovering Africa again last year during the Libyan war and seeing on YouTube the lynching and butchering of blacks there. I read the stories of survivors and witnesses. My journey as an African (not an African-American) of the diaspora began 20 years ago when I was in Peace Corps in Botswana.  What happened in Libya on all fronts changed me and forced me to look within.  Right now I am reading a book called Introduction to African Civilizations by John G. Jackson, edited by the great Pan-Africanist scholar John Henrik Clarke. I was embraced in Africa.  I now have both proud Africans as Facebook friends and followers on Twitter.  I am looking and searching for the truth about my people.  I am also drawing parallels between what happened to Africa when the Western European first penetrated it and what is now happening in the Middle East and Africa. The only thing is the guns are just bigger and the tricks are just slicker. The destruction of these civilizations are starting again, only this time the whole world might not survive.  

So on to my little unfinished poem.  It's a letter. Let's see how it goes.  Perhaps it's already complete.


Dear Sisters
My dear African sisters of the Diaspora 
and my sisters on the other side of 
the powerful seas, you too of other proud 
and long traditions now under assault.
We need to walk in beauty again and abolish
any alien way, any abnormality that lessens us 
as the beautiful daughters of God,
we sisters and lovers of true men.
We need to splash ourselves
in the rose water of beauty and 
genuine femininity.