The Color Wheel

I.

I’ve traced his migration here his Painted flags carried in his eyes and hanging from his doorposts his parents flying high waving the truth that they weren’t born here.

I try to backtrack through my own.

A living testament to your histories green card acceptance what path brought you to this place?

Row homes shoved beside people your history never dreamed you live next too south Philly has forced you to realize who you are.

Your flags not Irish or Mexican, Vietnamese, or Japanese.

Its red white and blue.

Stop trying to trace it back further.

II.

I move, place my feet in patterned rhythms, twirling through my present pain I am dancing.

Ballet leaps on cobbled stone steps of my new home I am trying to fit in here.

Realizing I cant Mambo more than those that made it up I have gotten tired faster than I thought I would.

My history can’t manifest a new movement through another person’s back-story I have to discover my own.

Realizing its just okay to be black.

Not banging drums of kente cloth African dance moves but black

A Negro spiritual is about as far back as you go.

Your soul resides in its song.

III.

I saw my history today.

Wrapped in swaddling clothes carried on the back of whip ripped flesh I don’t know how I got there.

Or where it’s going.  What cross it’s carrying.

Drugging through southern back woods Louisiana lynch dreams I saw my history move on toward Calvary.

Sacrificing its self for my future being.

My history realized it was black today.

Not dark skinned or light but the stigma of black carrying bullet shots and ghetto slang and Barack Obama all in the same name I made a discovery about me today.

Saw myself move toward the love of those who may have but a sliver of connection to me we are a people.

Made up of a heart full of nations I don’t know the name of all having migratory patterns landing us in a barrier 50 states and locking us to a share future.

My future stopped caring about what our separated pasts were it just saw your flesh tones.

And decided you could understand.

And understanding.

Agree to fight the oppression of the color wheel.