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The signs may have bounced as lightly as bodies do…in the back of speeding pickup trucks, carried in a circle by groups that had written on them, or held them upright to herald a fervent march. There was plenty of debating and pontificating saturating the airwaves, regarding race and the like. But all of it was only chatter outside the walls of the city jail; voices that echoed at some distance from the banks of the small institutional island, saying things that were of mild interest to the residents, perhaps.

As it turns out, the people that housed the buildings of the city jail had seen many sons shot in the bloom of youth, and stood stoically over the bodies of more than one brother or cousin. If a galvanization was taking place away from shimmering, looping barbwire fences, no one had sent any word of it. Business still conducted itself without the usual fanfare on the inside. The occupants of the dorms were still being roused just before sunlight to be trucked out to court, walking past lines of unmoved and unaffected faces; following instructions…

Gone From the City Jail

The woman was lying there dead for almost half an hour by the time the technicians arrived (so the witnesses had said). Scurrying, no doubt, to do their work on a body whose essence had long withdrawn from it. They likely filed the other women out of the holding cell like wayward schoolchildren facing the reckoning after a marathon of misbehavior. And the women had misbehaved, by all accounts. They raised a ruckus with pleas that increased in octave and frequency as the hours passed. All the while, the lone sick woman had gone from clenching her arms around her stomach to convulsing on a bench that had been cleared off for her.

But now she was dead. There was nothing left to complain about, at least, for the moment. None of the police officers would have to be inconvenienced after all. There would only be anxious stares and mouths covered by hands as the body was hauled out; pulled from the cell of the city jail, carted down the fluorescent hallway and out the front door to some cold and remote place. The mother of the deceased would hear of her daughter’s demise and collapse somewhere far out of the imagination of that night’s precinct staff. The son of the dead woman would have to do all of his weeping in the periphery.

Alas, this is where poor brown women come to die; in the central booking station of the metropolis. They pass out of existence swiftly now, not slow, like the beginnings of an avalanche with a buildup of environmental forces pummeling at its core – but spontaneous like the accelerating snow, gushing and widening in its downward flow. This is the place where backs are turned upon cries for help, and the banging on metal bars, as if no actual people are crowded there. But no actual people could ever be assigned to such spaces in a culture that values them; piled in by the thousands like livestock or human cargo for the selling; crouching on floors or leaning on walls or pressing their faces against the iron; waiting to be called before a bench or to be laid out to die on one.

On The Loss of My Dear Friend, Ms. Lady

When I was younger, I often wondered how it was that the elders around me seemed to react to death so calmly. Now, as a man, I realize that they have had to come to a reconciliation with the thing after having seen so much of it. I feel that way, like someone that has come to a forced settlement. It has not even been close to half a century and I am determined that I have sat too much in the audience of farewell ceremonies. I feel that way.

By his own decree, my brother transitioned out of this life not long ago and it wrecked my understanding of everything that is. I am still dragging myself back to solid footing. I thought about it as I sat in the second row of the church this time. Ms. Lady was dead. In pain, she exited. She had battled an autoimmune disease for some twenty-five years and succumbed.

The building was a beautiful structure. Somewhere up on a hill. There were wide glass panes that ran the length of its dimensions and sunlight outside, soft carpeting like a lake of burgundy wine, intricate organ pipes clinging to the walls like brass bones; even the religious symbols were striking. I made the sign of the cross. I recited creeds from memory. I sang the hymns that I had been socialized with, although I no longer subscribed to the religious constructs these things represented.

Ms. Lady would probably think I had become full of myself, transformed into some pretentious intellectual type with blasphemous ideas. We had lost touch over the years somewhat. I am certain that she did not have the time or luxury to think about her faith as indoctrination anyway. And who would I be to tell her different? She was battling her disease, and by all accounts, squeezing the most out of life before it was gone. We would never have the opportunity to even discuss such matters, or for me to explain that I still believed in faith, its power and a God of the universe – this one and all the others.

But what did it matter now? She had transitioned out of this life and so had my beloved brother before her. We were contemporaries. We had all played together as children. And now, in what many consider to be the prime of life, she exited. Just like that, there was more for me to come to terms with. Something inside of me wanted to fall out on the floor and bawl. Instead, I sat in the pews with my kin and sang the words printed in the program. 

Stunted

There are so many words to speak but no will to do the telling. Something has hunkered down and settled, and pressed its weight like pounds of heavy dough; suffocating. He could claw his way through the pasty walls and pull them into strings, but the desire has gone from him, or the strength. Instead, he watches from a distance through a cloudy window, thinking that he should make some move, assessing whether he truly ever had the ability he had once been so convinced about – wondering, if he even cared now. He floats like a half-fish, looking outward, back and forth in the murky underwater trapped behind a stretch of steel. He hovers, as if he were flooded over by a vat of ink, rendered almost motionless, unable to lift even a finger.

Lady in the Perimeter 1

After her seasons have come and gone, it will be her sereneness that he remembers most, that ease with which she greets every single occurrence after more than ninety-five years of having lived. And for each weekly visit, the vision of the doors opening into a stately display of the woman magnificently assembled in her rooms will be panoramic in his memory. She has had to be a survivalist, for certain, probably more as the branches slow their sway in the garden behind her wall than at any other period she has seen. She is often found floating deep in a state of musing, or hovering like a sunflower over the pages of a book, or resting her colorfully wrapped head on the tall polished headboard, in league with the greatest black matriarchs of the two centuries within which she has existed.

A Special Hearing

A hospital bed held the man now, and baby blue flannel covered his limbs. His face was drawn into a deeper brown than the rest of him, and shadows made a half-circle over the skin under his eyes. They were the kind of heavy shadows that the sunlight could not stretch far enough through the window bars to reach. He was overcome, with sickness, with emotion, with the struggle to form once easy words into full sentences, and with a mind full of burdens no other soul could access.

This was some woman’s son, well into his fifties now. He seemed distant, isolated from the reality of his situation. The nurses fluttered in and out of the room, unbothered. They whisked past the officers posted at the door, securing any sentiment they may have held, under white latex gloves. A young advocate sat close to the edge of a chair, not far from the bed. He leaned in close to decipher the strained whispers from his detained elder, contemplating a defense. It was like struggling to catch a breeze from the backside a rock. The elder said that he had spent most of his manhood inside of a prison. He had embarked on a career that was the easiest for him to reach, one that entailed the small-time trade of weapons and street-wide narcotics that he personally tested. He was still dealing with the professional hazards and all the other perils that he inherited by circumstance. And he had found himself in this position again. He shook his head.

Somewhere outside of the room, a group of officials was loitering on the glossy hallway floors, becoming inpatient about the length of time this entire affair was taking. Inside, the younger of the two men was feeling quite helpless. The man in front of him reminded him of an uncle. He tried to read on the elder’s face any awareness of his impending demise. If the man knew that the sickness would take him, he did not show it. He only spoke about his family. His sons in Florida, who did not know what had happened to him, and who, he mused, would likely not care to know. A sister he had once been very close to; a younger brother that had just died. The elder would soon join those that had gone before him. The advocate and the nurses exchanged the knowledge in their glances. The advocate sighed as he looked over at the painted white bars that made a wall in front of the hospital windows. He observed the elder’s roommate reading the comics in the other bed, as if he were the only person in the room. An official suddenly appeared at the door and inquired if the two men were finally prepared. The advocate nodded. He wondered in which facility the elder would eventually die. He breathed hard, gathered the papers on his lap, and readied himself.

Passion in the Everglades 1

We come together at the singular space and instant ordered by the one true God, whatever that may be. We thought love a likely enough candidate and worshipped it. Our patterns crisscrossed like intersecting railways, one leading northeast and the other northwest, or southwest and southeast or up or down. We assessed each other that way, in every possible direction, fusing glances in the mirror while the others driveled on in the room. We were touching knees and thighs, fingers and knees, arms and shoulders, shoulders and thighs all for the feel of the thing that cannot be tangibly felt. We could convene here or anywhere in the universe, known and unknown, blocking out the traffic roaring down the boulevard just outside the building. Our two spirits, those spirits, spiraled around each other in an upward tornado, oblivious to everything but themselves – through all the mists they projected; unconstrained!

Meshell Unchained

Black woman, play your guitar. Someone slanted back in perfect pitcher poise, with a leg hoisted at the mark and pelted towards you, the gift. The hurler watches you from a great distance; watches it fluttering from antiquity, skipping through the realms like a stone bouncing across the surface of a lake. Your heart is in the song. Play your guitar. Send your lusciousness out like silky bubbles just blown; mystify them. You sing, like a chanteuse in a sequin robe, with flowers pinned just above your ear, quivering under that solitary indigo light. But you do it your way, as debonair as a boxer that has mastered the use of a musical instrument. You sway aggressively in a black dress shirt. You are fragile too, guiding the neck and fretboard like a wand or a conductor’s baton, smirking underneath your strawberry red glasses, knowing what you know. You render the crowd immobile with each tug of the string. You moan, floating atop the baseline like froth over ale, summoning from the depths the sounds that have come from a line of once captive women, now free – but none more boundless than you center stage. Goddamnit, black woman, play your guitar.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother: I Write In The Name Of Kwame Osei Carter!

My Beloved Brother, I think about you every single day. I feel your presence all around me. I talk to you in my dreams. I think about us often as children, imagining what our future lives would have been like. And life was so beautiful with you in it; my oldest and closest friend; my big brother. I learned so much from you. You are a true gift. I can't describe how much I miss you, your counsel and guidance, your wisdom, your company, your kindness and your love. I am extremely grateful for the time that the universe allowed us together. Your life has blessed me immeasurably - your spirit blesses me still. In quiet moments, I remember some experience we have shared and smile. I thank The Creator for sharing you with us. I thank The Creator for you. I am so thanfkul for you, so thankful for you, Kwame...so thankful.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

I knelt down by the make-shift alter today, the one that the women built in the place where you died. There were three unlit candles standing quietly in the platter, sharing the creamy gold color that burgeoning sunlight holds. I spoke to you. I am so thankful to you. I meditated alone and without fear, there in the place you died.

It is my birthday again, and this is a sort of milestone; an age I wanted to reach but thought I would never see; you left instead. Our Granny held my face and kissed it, saying a blessing for this event that now falls on the actual day of the week I arrived. You would have appreciated that fact. How could I have survived without your counsel, your friendship, your protection? I am so thankful to you. I am so thankful for you.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

I feel you so constantly since your transformation, hovering around me; sharing with me, from your place behind the screens, all the tangible experiences of my continuation – smiling with me at an inside joke, hearing the phrases I speak into my still rooms, and seeing all the things I know. Even now, when we come close to the point where the globe will have made its full orbit, and arrived at that place, that portal through which you relieved yourself of life by your own hands, I can still quickly be reduced to tears. Some memory brings it on, or a song that I have known you to love, or the thought of something that you confided you yearned for but, alas, were never destined to have. There is no way for me to reconcile your loss.

As children we might have suspected that something compelling was upon us. While we talked and studied the overhead sequins from our veranda rails, we were so connected. We would later discern the way of the Divine; delicate and undetectable, like individual strands of hair, but part of the larger design still. Twenty years will come in just this same way and go, and I will be stunned to have survived it without your company; to not have succumbed to my initial instincts to follow you into the next realm – that is, if the universe even allows such longevity. For your leaving has convinced me that our time is as fragile as daylight, ready to be claimed by the slightest shadow, but unpredictable overall. Just look at our Grandmother, who, we were once both certain would light our way into the next world. She has lived three of your lifetimes and now doubles her prayers for you by the bed.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

We might be coming closer to terms with the truth; that you have stayed here for just as long as you were meant to. The air that moves around us has heard us declare it regularly; we’ve repeated it like a line that must be learned, and now we’re digesting it.

We came, like a band of thieves, back to the grounds for the first time since the interment, desperately searching out your name along the rows of bronze, feeling short of time. We scanned over crosses and praying hands with the map flapping like a flag in the wind; and then, the exclamation came.

We paused, each one of us, to watch the woman clasp her hands. She cried out in jubilation or exaltation or perhaps relief or grief or all. She was the first to discover you all over again, just like in your beginning and just like at your end. The company murmured that there was no mistake in it.

We made a chain of clutching hands and whimpered as an elder prayed over the letters that form your name. The woman knelt down to place a wreath against the metal and touched the plaque with both of her hands; the garlands were designed in some of your favorite colors and we heard her thanking the maker for having given you to us.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

We gathered your clothes finally, your mother and I, to put them away or give them away. We loitered at the door for a period before entering your space. It is still your space although you’ve withdrawn. It feels like you. Your things are all arranged in the way only you would have them; the cocoa butter lotion in a big bottle on the shelf next to loose pennies and dimes, a watch, some cologne, an empty potato chip can toppled over, and DVDs in a row overlooking stacks of books. Your shirts and jackets hang like museum pieces: garments that were once worn and kept warm, but now hallowed artifacts after the sudden relinquishment. I ran my hands over the material.

We attempted to work with ears willed deaf to emotion and folded each piece after careful consideration. The woman was standing at the foot of the bed slowly buttoning shirts, gently folding slacks and quietly pairing socks. She sighed every once in a while. I remained silent as I handed her bunches from the piles that surrounded me on the center of your bed. I thought you may be watching from behind the veils between dimensions, and hoped you would appreciate the reverence with which we worked. We loved you so. I crawled across the floor and assembled your shoes. I placed them all in a bag. Who could have dared fathom life would bring us to this?

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

The woman sits in the armchair alone quite regularly now. She takes many of her meals there. She looks at the television as if she can see through it clear to the other side, with the sounds and colors carrying on unnoticed. Maybe she is remembering overseeing some stage of your development, with a sensation that cannot be imagined or described. She attempts to recover herself whenever someone walks into the room.

We speak about you often and in bewilderment still, shaking our heads to complete our sentences; and from somewhere in the viscera, a grunt would come.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

Because you altered the state of the whole universe by going, I will continue to write about you. Somewhere, in some atmosphere, a cluster of stones have modified their trajectory. Here, my complete consciousness has been realigned. You have gone from us; you have abandoned the only manner in which we knew you, and left me alone in our once common struggle to live a life of meaning.

I did not know it was possible to sink any deeper into a shroud of malaise. I started the process even before your departure. The thing inside that sees all things must have been alerted, but I was in the dark. I think of us with no more than twelve years between us, lying on the bed and imagining our time twenty years into the future – we lived to see it. We made it to that place after doing battle in series, trudging through unfamiliar territory, and mastering life in what the powers have termed as the inner city.

We used the best of what we could muster and persisted. We persisted. For even in the many days where I was certain I would fall dead from the strain, you shouldered me and pulled me along. We met the trials of the young men coming of age in our environment like twin apprentices training for a warrior’s title. We held conference on the concrete rails of those Crown Heights stoops, knowing that the adults in the house could not possibly comprehend our strife, nor would we have wanted them to. They had their collective and individual troubles to manage, so we made do with our own; trouble in the yard after school had let out; trouble behind the sliding subway car doors; trouble in the pack of sneakers trailing after us down the block; trouble in the path leading past the project walls; trouble at the edge of the stick-up kid’s knife, trouble through the bullet holes covering the backboard in the park. Like twin apprentices training for a warrior’s title, we met those trials coming of age in our environment. We used the best of what we could muster and persisted. We persisted. My beloved brother, If only for the legacy you have left with me, what volumes of significance your existence has had!

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

And finally you speak – you speak in a dream; no more sitting silently by, gazing in a daze as we all surround you, interrogating you; no more stealing up to the bedside in my sleep within sleep to slip rolled dollar bills underneath my pillow. Words! Words spoken from your voice; and shining from your eyes is that same familiarity and affection. Oh, how I miss you and cry for you in many quiet spaces. We that have remained, console one another, feeling perhaps, that our own individual loss of you is the deepest, as selfish as the thought may be. We have known you, you see, and we feel entitled. But now you speak. This is the thing that the mystics articulate, sermonizing according to their respective affiliations. This is the phenomenon that the elders describe, when the body rests, and the spirit relieves itself to float into the outer spheres. I have taken to sleeping with the hallway light on, thinking you would come, hoping for it but being a little fearful still. I have been conditioned, after all, by the limited and ridiculous imaginations of those that have been given license to create entertainment. They depict images born out of fear and faithlessness. If you had been here we could have discussed it, and the interesting and crippling aftermath of your departure.

Your appearance was unkempt at first. You came bruised and with restrictive forces that I could not see, asking them if you could tell me where you were. But they prohibited you from identifying your location, and I wanted so badly to know. You told me that you were taking time to adjust and that you were studying again. I was uneasy when it was over and recounted an abridged and more palatable version in the retelling. In the next moment, you seemed more confident, preparing me for the trip you would soon take; you were full of suggestion and metaphor - affording me a luxury in the realms that you did not give me in life. Maybe it was necessary for me to relive it elsewhere, re-envisioned. I wept and begged you not to go. You were resolute. Then, another night came and I slid under the covers ruminating over personal issues intermingled with thoughts of you. It has been that way every night. We stood with our siblings around us. Yet, we were the only two in conversation. There was some surge of light being produced from your skin; brown, brown, shimmering brown – brown in luminescence. Your hair flourished down your back in its natural state. Your eyes were so knowing and full of affection. And so, my brother, you have finally found your place, I said. Yes, you responded. Yes.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

Our cars rolled one behind the other like we were first and second in a motorcade. It was a sunny afternoon, some of the most beautiful weather that had come to town at that point; a sample of the summer you would never see. I led the way to the highway. It was a route you had never taken. We had placed the cargo we were delivering in the seat behind mine. The child said he would rather take the ride back with you, going the same way he had come; choosing you to be his carrier once more. We laughed about it on the sidewalk and then entered our vehicles. I smiled to myself as I pulled out into the main road. You were waiting for me there.

We drove through a city in which we had faced so many obstacles, shoulder to shoulder, and survived. We had a history here. Our destinies had been tied together in knots and had stretched back through these streets and across the continents. And now we were together again, as we had been so often, sharing a moment only we could share – there is such a bond between us.

I led your way out of the borough, ushering you out. My God, but it was a pleasant day! I could not even locate the troubles of my mind. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw you, taking in the scenery as we drove. I thought about how odd it was, you, looking as if you were sightseeing; as if you had never lived in this place and now saw everything for the first time. We were moving slower than I anticipated, but it seemed appropriate. You were dazzling in the glass, surveying everything around you, seeming so very calm, so stunning and young as the sun showered your eyes, your skin and the edges of your hair in a burst of bronze.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

We can’t see the future, we think about what it should be, but we never get it right! That is what our grandmother said. I sat diagonally on the bed, across from the place in which she was always so grandly positioned. There was a silence between us so heavy… and looming somewhere in our environment was the threat of collapse, the demise of poise and composure. But neither of us would succumb. Her legs were elevated as she sat upright against the headboard. Her feet were covered with a pair of those colorful silky socks she was known to wear. And her hair was tied inside matching material just above her traveling gaze; eyes that had seen the better of nine decades now looked equally pained and puzzled. Hadn’t you and I discussed her great departure? You and I. How we would shudder to even contemplate that coming time and say in those somber and quiet talks that we would have to prepare ourselves – what a loss it would be! We would hardly know how to bear it. But you preceded her. And now I was there sitting alone with her, diagonally across from the place in which she was always so grandly positioned, diagonally still from the chair where you would sit close to her by the bed. I recalled how they had held her by each arm and walked slowly with her, cane and all, to view the last of you. She cried out your name then, and the room instantly became silent.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

You reclined on the couch. I remember. You reclined on the couch with your feet dangling and the remote control working in your hands to find channels on the new television. You said that you liked the size of it, and I laughed with my eyes still fixed on the computer. Our nephew was playing somewhere in the area, running his line of cars across the hardwood floors.

A sudden thought broke my concentration. I saw that you were asleep when I turned around. The child was still busying himself with the toys; using his mouth to make the sound trucks make. And I watched you for a short while – I do not know why. For no signals in the wind suggested that this was our last day together. No voice from outer space pitied me enough to even whisper that only two days stood between you and death.

It had already been recorded in the atmosphere.

We were like children again, I thought, laughing at some joke in the hallway. We could always come across a good laugh between us. I heard you tell the little boy to wait for us to accompany him down the stairs. I stayed by the door with a leg touching the old television, while you searched for a place in the hall where you could briefly rest your drink; a large cup of that sweet tea you had loved so much, with a plastic lid and straw. But there seemed to be no place that could hold it. You looked over at me and grinned.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

In the still and chilly parlor, they placed your body amidst a sea of petals; with hundreds of empty seats before you; with air and solemn music flowing – possibly from the vents. And life was at such a standstill for those of us that had arrived – just us four at first, bearing witness to what the others would come to see. We huddled like displaced orphans, in a cluster not far from the casket, too stunned even to speak; too stricken even to let out a whimper, at least for the moment. And in time we were moved to action, arranging things to suit you best; working to give ourselves distraction; wanting our love for you to be on display. We twisted the towering wreaths so that the roses could confront the crowd. And our family soon appeared in a mass of hesitant black, with the elders leading the group like priests guiding a pilgrimage. And as they ventured forward, staggering and gasping for breath, the group disassembled in the aisles and there were tears everywhere.