Black

Black.
Crime festered hoods, drug overlords, poverty punished ghettos,
HIV/AIDS ravaged cadavers, down-low deceivers, violent thug gangs ,
misogynistic populism, health disparities run amok, fissuring educational gaps, skyrocketing unemployment.
When that loud group of boys got on the bus how I recoiled in judgement.
The distance I tried to place between myself and that shadow
earned me a lifetime of imprisonment, stuck in my own foul reflection.

Black.
But now as I look, I see an primal energy, raw and irrepressible, a sacred strength
passed on through decades of hardship, in song, food, and fellowship
and the ability to endure the most nightmarish tempests
such will erase and transmute the jim crows and apartheids
because nothing less than love and truth are the alchemical agents
working to free us all at last.

Black.
I used to be afraid of the dark
but now I embrace it in wholeness.
When you sit alone in the true depths of darkness
you begin to be breathed by it and you realize
that chasing the light can be a distraction.
I celebrate the mystery of darkness
I surrender myself to the unknown
to discover in each shadowy moment
the inherent beauty of the night.

Heart of Darkness

Be where you are, fully, presently, wholly,
and if it is in darkness that you currently reside
savor its thickness, delight in its mystery
and the way it obscures vision.
Let it embrace you with its infinite capacity.

When darkness is its most potent
What is there? What is present in the heart?
You may think – but I cannot see
and I am frightened
and that may be true,
but of what my sweetness?
Do you think your sight has ever
brought you closer to your truest strength.
Precious, what if you
released your need to understand?

Darkness asks an alertness of us,
a readiness for anything
a collaboration with the unknown --
what we never really knew in the first place.
In darkness lies possibility and potential.
It is not to be feared
Its lead as the fall guy has hidden its obsidian beauty
It is the birthplace of galaxies
and the dearest currency of our own hearts.
Hearts which weep with our shared suffering.
Tears unending in tributaries source bound.

Enough.
So easily we are lulled into believing to
fear the night – it is that of which we are most afraid.
But it is in the darkness that our greatest gift lies,
Our immense and unbounded completeness
Naked, vulnerable, powerless and alone.