Never

(Election night in Harlem C.2008 By Aja-Monet)

Last night
after the lips
of a desperate raindrop
came over the New York City skyline
and flooded the autumn
of our shedding faces,
a skeptical skeleton of joy came to me in a foiling dream
there was a childish laughter
giggling
in the faint voice
of my singing blood
and I lifted my face to a screaming world
a world of one old, weathered man beautifully, brown, bruised
walking down the drunk midnight of Bowery street
with a long trench coat wrestling the tug and tear of the wind
the warmth of a retired sun in his eyes,

we
did
it.

as he left into the disappearing point of distance,
amidst the honking horns of foreign taxi cab drivers
and the strained throats of jubilant by standers
I watched a city lit by a light no electricity could ignite
a skyscraper no building could reach,
a ceiling has fallen in some corner of the earth
where there is no sky and no breeze.

Tonight,
Obama is
our echoing mantra, our generations great romance.

Never
have I been more proud
to be an owl-wise woman
of shackles and shambles
of nooses
and deeply rooted tree branches,
of clarinet oceans and violin passages,
ambulant picket signs and riot flesh,
of thick waving curls and frowning hot combs,

Never
have I been more proud
of the strutting finger snap of a woman scorned,
carrying the earthquake stretching in her hips,
of the marching tap-dance misshape in my toes, bunion, and corn,
the fantastical saxophone in my voice,

Never
have I been more proud of the forbidden love of this land,
the large worn
lines and wrinkles of my mother's hands,
to be a woman
of
this
color
now, still.

There is more.
So much more
to come
and
go

This morning,
at the wake
of a Harlem dawn
yawning on the sweet brown-sugar blanket
hugging my bones,
I awoke a splinter in the wild forest of this country's eyes
shrugging at the worries of yesterday
floating down the enormous spine of Malcom X blvd
I could feel a humming in our gaze
an infectious spirit in our lilac children
and I watched as a police officer
pale-ridden as the ghost of his ancestors,
hugged a stinging homeless sun-man
carrying the weight of forgotten shores in his eyes

what awe it is to have lived
in this day, on this morning
of all days
and all mornings.

c.aja-monet



(Election night in Harlem C.2008 By Aja-Monet)