I seem to spend most of my days resting under a tree of low hanging fruit
Seeking shelter from an angry sun
Its half grown form stands stark still,
Staring, because they know this is purgatory, and
I know I must leave
I look to my fallen companions, felled by
Gravity, or an avian attack, their
sweet blood stains the concrete pink, I marvel at
oh how easily I could join them
But how they must spite my presence on their dying grounds
For I am not quite dead yet
Alive? No.
But still, I look to the branches above, where
the luckier ones hang like a tantalizing lure, their
sweet figures glow just so through the leaves, they plead
“Oh how easily you could join us!”
And they are right
It is not difficult to grab for low hanging fruit,
But my fingers are murderous
Pick, twist, snap,
And it’s all over again
I sink back down to the ground, and
The cycle repeats
No
I gaze instead at the tree, how it
Bears the weight of all this low hanging fruit by itself, for so long
That its skin is carved with lines of strain, and
It’s limbs spew crooked, but somehow,
Under all that adversity it stands strong, and very much
Alive.
So there I decide
My growth will be slow, but
My leaves will someday spread wide, and cast shade
Over low hanging fruit
Here I’ll tower, rooted but free
So I may shield another like me
They say
that black is not a color,
but rather an absence of it.
They might be right.
They might be right
But it is still my favorite.
I see
the reds and yellows, blues and greens
and I think
They are expressions.
They are envy and anger, joy
By the simplest definition
Like we’re taught in children’s books,
they’re a lesson, a message, a signal
They stamp my skin when I wear them, and burn my eyes.
Would they see me in them, they’d think they know me.
They think they know me.
But I disagree.
Black is a color, an expression
lesson, message, signal
Power, it whispers to the crowd
Power enough to resist your simple definitions or your gaze, or your insights,
because they cannot know me.
They cannot know me