the bussed

it was about this time that the council began its move to provide transparency, they would let us see everything. we just couldn't digest it. it was only a film about time travel, only a film that showed the string, we were on that string, and remain trapped in that wave, although we didn’t know it. it was another hard day at the Minstrel Cafe. They should have told me black men played trumpet. They should have saved a father for me but they threw them all away and left the conversation to linger. the things they showed us in broad daylight, are the things they left us to fear. tearing me apart. this truth is tearing me apart.

a decade after I graduated high school, they would tell the tale of men running across dimensions to catch one singular pulse of evil. the moral of that story is they will give you just a little theory, a small cut of the map and then shit on that lock so you can’t use your key. riding those busses felt that way. they bussed us to those new schools and then made sure we could not use the books. teachers arguing with our mothers, challenging our value now undervalued. the pressures on our mothers equaling a twice tied together length of leather, stinging my thighs. it is foolish to think one singular pulse resulting in the absence of truth could collapse so many homes, create so many rapists, promote so much violence.

some of the bussed were forced to laugh at themselves, sold at the expense of their peers. the color of shit, written in blue ink, and I thought he was a friend .. this is how self loathing becomes the norm. easy to say uncle Tom to a child learning the language of the children of his oppressors. some of the bussed resisted the urge to return to their homes. the language barrier grew as the bussed learned to miss their siblings turning up their noses.

the bussed didn’t get to skip the crack epidemic. crack made Sandinistas of them all. given and then hunted. missiles for life sentences, cocaine so those marines could walk across the backs of our brothers and sons, shooting them dead in their beds, 20 years for 5 grams.. feeding themselves on the blood and flesh of the newly bought and traded. how does a man measure against the broken glass in the courtyards, or the 22 million dollars used to purchase Chore Boy in 2005 (prestige brands/prestige healthcare). almost the whole story clogging the airways, killing us in the stairwells. recording our every death. what gratitude for another piece of that installation. it is as if we are all wearing the clothing of the suspect seen heading where we are heading. it is as if we took those meetings with those Senators in ‘86, ‘88, and again ‘94, silent partners bussed to the new schools.

art credit: Partnership (oil on canvas, 2007)—Norman Catherine