"Elie Wiesel says that the greatest evil in the world is not anger or hatred, but indifference. If that is true, then the opposite is also true: that the greatest love we can show our children is the attention we pay them, the time we take for them. Maybe we serve children the best simply by noticing them."
— Mumia Abu-Jamal (Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience)
How do you measure a man? Or even a Father? If you wont take off the cloak and gavel, then it's best that you dont even bother...Oh there will be standards. We kings will remain golden. The Gold standard of "BEING THERE" is the first testament to a prince beholden.
Beads of sweat gather...As many on brim of brow as in palm of hand, expecting. Don't know whether to expect more or to expect less, so you are just there, expecting. If you called it anxiety or cold feet, justice would never feel the sunlight's warmth on its face. This is fear in its most primal form, but adrenaline is almost a sedative in the city where its always "ON"
And no one was there like you.
You were never at games or recitals. Working 15hrs days, it doesnt matter the game you play repetition is a teacher's rifle. I learn best by example, and the black board was full of snapped pictures, cab routes and toll roads. The working man is an artist's muse
Single father, lone wolf providing a first rate education comes with some dues you have to pay. So being there..... WAS "being there." If loyalty yields royalty, you were the King of Kings. Stood by me when I was grimy, now we laugh about where my teachers thought I might be...And how close my life was to becoming "more-than-likely"....
ON N' ON N' ONNNNN, Til da break of dawn. For me the Best of Lauryn Hill starts with the Mystery of Iniquity. Putting purpose into a workhorse....never fool yourself into calling it the work sort just because your eyes pick up some activity.
We reversed nature by burning and pulling a civilized nigger apart and bullwhipping the other to the point of death, all in her presence. By her being left alone, unprotected, with the MALE IMAGE DESTROYED, the ordeal caused her to move from her psychologically dependent state to a frozen, independent state. In this frozen, psychological state of independence, she will raise her MALE and female offspring in reversed roles. For FEAR of the young male’s life, she will psychologically train him to be MENTALLY WEAK and DEPENDENT, but PHYSICALLY STRONG. Because she has become psychologically independent, she will train her FEMALE offsprings to be psychologically independent. What have you got? You’ve got the nigger WOMAN OUT FRONT AND THE nigger MAN BEHIND AND SCARED. This is a perfect situation of sound sleep and economics.
The Willie Lynch Letter: How to Make a Slave
....I'd rather be wide awake and broke
He was raised
On the Gold coast
Amongst Cassava plants
And cold oats
Barefoot distances
Schools and minstrels
With Atlantic Backdrops
And fishing boats
AHHH! If those feet could talk
And those eyes hawked
It'd be smooth tunes
On moons
With Mike Jack
Teaching backsliders
How to walk
With every bead of sweat
Let every man
Expand is own parameter
Zoom in
To the growth within
Beauty exposed
By the lens
On life's camera
Printed on 35mm
High quality fuji film
The dark rooms
Mixing Chemicals
With moments
Both unique and perennial
Illuminate
The mind
And exalt a child
W/ an uplifting subliminal
Frame your journey
in your household
As an everyday reminder
The salt will fill the hour glass
So in-between
You gotta keep grinding
We didn't have it all, but I wouldn't have asked for more. Well I could have... but shit, not in the material...it would have spoiled my appetite for "the more" life would have in store. I was reading too much to talk too much. I can carry a conversation, but I thrive in the unspoken.
So its not what you say its, what you do and mean, so an intention may be short of mention but short smiles on a long face is my preferred form of alchemy.
"If my children can do more more with their life than I did with my life, my job here is done......."
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