Joseph McNair

  

Oshun’s Kiss, Osanyin’s Redemption Multiple personalities rotate about a self axis; self substances spin faster and faster, sent spinning by the magnetic, radiant and chemical interplay of substance and spirit; drawn centripetally inward in impossible orbital motions. Self substances blend, become glutinous, set… The boy opens his eyes, pulls away from the beautiful older woman he has been kissing. He is discriminated. He is dizzy. When he tries to focus on the world outside of himself, it seems as if that world is spinning around him. When he closes is eyes to steady himself, he feels as if he is falling head over heels in space. He intuitively fixes his gaze on a spot between his eyes to steady himself. He stops spinning after some time. He becomes aware of a steady flow of images on the insides of his eyelids which, it seems, he can access as they are being transmitted. These are memories, his memories. And he suddenly knows who he is. Shango laughed. “Leave it to you, Oshun to know exactly what to do to help me get myself together. Or should I say, Ezzie.” He could hold her gaze now. And he was not at all a child. Ezzie was struck dumb with astonishment and surprise, more at herself than at this strange boy. What had come over her? “Am I mad” She thought. Maggie will kill me. What insane compulsion had come over her to kiss the boy? The boy had read for her. No, more than that. He had done something else. She knew as she was thinking this, going over it again in her head that she was more than who she was. The guardian spirit who took her, possessed her during the nights of the ceremony was in her now; was one with her. I am Oshun, she thought. I have her memories. It was as if the essence of the goddess had been poured into her; soaking into her heavier, sedimentary self. For a little more than a year, she had been teaching the boy the divining arts. This was part of an intensive education program conceived by his mother, Maggie, the village healer, to prepare him for some destiny that none save she seemed to completely know and understand. Tom, the village blacksmith, was teaching him how to smith and Peter, Maggie’s most accomplished apprentice, was giving him an advance course on the efficacies and healing properties of the herbs and plants growing wild in the forest. The boy was a natural diviner and over the year had demonstrated such abilities as scrying or discovering things about a person by looking at a shiny object, into a mirror or a basin of water. He had learned to read the configurations of sticks or bones or Ezzie’s seashells when tossed onto the ground. He could gain impressions and information about an object or anything connected to it by holding it in his hand. In fact, the boy could read almost anything, emotions, sounds, scents, tastes or images. All one had to do is show him how to do it once. Ezzie would take him to the village market or the village square and have him “read” people – get impressions and information about them just by looking at them and giving his well-developed psychic senses free rein. His accuracy was uncanny. Ezzie tested him first on people she knew and knew about so that she could confirm his findings. Then she tried him on strangers. She found that his vision ran the gamut from the past to the future. Much of what he said that she couldn’t immediately confirm, she either found to be true with closer investigation or it came to pass just as he had said it would. It was because of his demonstrated ability that the compulsion came on her to have him read for her. Initially, the thought of him reading her like he read those others elicited unpleasant feelings of apprehension, discomfort and even dread. She didn’t want this boy, who clearly worshipped her, to find out about her unhappy past – her infidelities, her fears and personal failings. Here was someone who loved her unconditionally, even if he was an adolescent boy, and she didn’t want to spoil that. But the compulsion wore on her, and this very day she had given in to it. She brought the boy to her house to give him lunch because she had worked him hard all morning. He had just finished eating when she insisted that he read for her. He was reluctant to do so at first, but as she already knew, he could refuse her nothing. He sat for a moment looking at her. His eyes began to lose their focus and then he began to speak. She was not at all prepared for what came out of the boy’s mouth. The impressions and information the boy revealed were about the goddess Oshun, daughter of Obatala the creator of mankind, sister to the goddesses Oya and Oba, sister and wife to the gods Ogun and Shango and Messenger of the Great Mystery, Olodumare. He recounted tales of goddess’s relations with each of these guardian spirits and forces of nature; named her Oshun and one of them. And as if that were not enough, the boy somehow called forth Oshun from somewhere deep within her. Ezzie momentarily experienced the awkward sensation of sharing her body with another; seeing different images at the same time and trying to make sense of them. She seemed to be able to penetrate the way things appeared to be and see the qualities that underlie those appearances as such. So fascinated was she with this “vision” that she was only marginally aware of the conversation going on between the boy and the goddess he had summoned; the personality sharing her body. And then the clarity that comes when one’s unconscious contents are integrated with consciousness began to pervade her awareness. She looked at the boy and saw what can only be described as his self-fires. She watched them flare with intensity and then attenuate, flare again to what seemed to be dangerously bright, and then almost go out. She knew the boy was in danger. She didn’t think, but let her new awareness guide her. The next thing she knew she was holding the boy’s face in her hands and looking deeply into his eyes. Then she used her teeth to administer tiny little grabs and bites on his lips before covering them with her own firmly, with a consistent pressure betraying a yielding softness. And with the same acuity the boy had applied to his divining, he kissed her back, releasing all of the pent up love and adoration he felt for her and more. For when his tongue began to gently lick her lips, stroke her tongue and inner mouth slowly with gentle flicking motions, it was like a prodigal returning home. That kiss shocked the system; stabilized the forces running rampant in the boy that were set in motion by the caress of Oshun’s memories. That kiss completed the blending. Fortunately for Ezzie, the boy pulled away… Maggie will never believe that I didn’t try to seduce the boy! She thought, dreading the confrontation that was sure to come. She knew that Maggie had some unspoken misgivings about her being left alone with Shango. Now, the healer’s worst fears had been realized. “Stop worrying, Ezzie. It’s not like we made love, ” Shango said. There was a twinkle in his eye and a little bit of bass in his voice. Had he read her mind? “What Mama knows or doesn’t know is not important. Your sweet kiss has made me whole. I am who I was and who I am; I am now free to work out my destiny in this body." There was a quiet jubilation in his voice and a new confidence. “ What are you talking about, Shango?” “It’s time you know, Ezzie-who-is-Enzili-who-is-Oshun. For you have an important role to play from henceforth. Examine your memories. Oshun is alive in you. She is one with you. She has blended her personality with yours and remains aware. Your awareness extends beyond the events of your earthly life and expands to include hers. The two of you are like overtones to a mysterious fundamental. I am here to show you how to explore and come to know that mystery.” “But this is not the way your mother has taught us, Shango. We have learned to surrender our heads so that the gods could mount them; possess us. We have been nothing more than horses to the gods. Now you would have us be one with the gods?” Ezzie felt the concerns of the goddess echoed in her question. She eerily felt like two people asking the same question but for two different reasons. “The time of the old ways has passed. I am here to show what even the gods do not know; how to experience the source of life in its essence, to transcend form and float free in the formless and infinite realm of Olodumare; to find within themselves and know the Great Mystery. To do this, the barriers and distinctions between the gods and man must be erased. Neither man nor god can do this alone. The Loas, the Orishas, the guardian spirits are but a higher harmonic of man who is also a harmonic of the great mystery. When the two harmonics are perfectly blended the fundamental can be heard clearly and known.” “I don’t know, Shango. This is very confusing.” “Do not worry, beloved. I will teach you as you have taught me." “You say I have an important role to play. Can you tell me what it is? “I will in time, Ezzie, but not before I have completed my studies with you, Peter and Tom. You, though, have taken me through a very important step in making me ready for the tasks I am destined to perform, but there is still more to be done. There are things I must yet do with Peter and Tom. All will soon be made plain. Just keep taking me each fourth and seventh week day to work on my divining. You are my beloved teacher. We were lovers once, Ezzie, but this time we play different roles." That evening, Maggie knew something was different the moment he stepped into the house. “What has happened to you, Shango?’ she said looking at her son closely. “My initiation has begun, Mama. Look through Papa Eshu’s eyes and see.” Maggie searched in her mind for the particular “feel” of her husband-who-was her-Self. Finding him, she looked with her double vision on her son. The eyes of Eshu showed her much. “Your fires are blended, my son and they burn bright. You are truly a god man.” “But this is only the beginning, Mama. I can now show myself to Peter and Tom. My work with Ezzie has made me whole. I have regained my greatest gift. I can see into men’s souls. I can open them up to their true natures without destroying them or myself.” “You say you have learned all of this from working with Ezzie, my son?” “Yes Mama.” Shango looked straight into his mother’s eyes when he said this, his whole demeanor an open challenge. Maggie looked back at him and took some time before responding. “It seems that the gods really do know what they are doing!” And Eshu’s laughter, indeed her own laughter, echoed loud and long in her head. The next morning was Peter’s regular day with Shango. Peter the albino, the gifted herbalist and healer was unbeknown to most, a sorcerer growing into his power. Peter, who could communicate with the spirits of all of the plants growing wild in the forest knew immediately that something had changed significantly about the boy. “What is it about you today, my young friend? You seem so different.” They were seated on the ground in their customary meeting place deep in the forest, at the foot of a blue gum tree. “Do I really seem different, Peter?” Shango said evasively. “Let me see” said Peter playfully. “Let me ask an expert.” Peter closed his eyes and spoke silently the words to evoke the spirit of the blue gum tree. The spirit came quickly to the familiar summons. “What do you wish of me, owner of the forest,” The spirit demanded. “What has changed about the boy? He seems so different today.” “He has become himself.” “How do you know this? “I have looked upon his fires. When you had him summon me before, he said he did not know me. I thought he was toying with me. Then his true self came and explained to me that he and the boy were not yet joined. I didn’t understand. I knew him from days of old as I have known you. How could he be himself and someone else as well. Then I looked upon his fires. It was like there were two fires burning. Today, there is only one.” Peter opened his eyes. “What is the blue gum tree talking about?” He thought. “There is a mystery here!” “Shango,” he asked carefully, “has anything special happened to you since I saw you last?” “Yes, Peter,” the boy replied, “much has happened.” “Will you tell me about it?” “Yes.” The boy closed his eyes and spoke. “Behold, Osanyin, for that is who you are, look upon me and know me. I have been called many things: I am he who snarls like a leopard and frightens the people away .I am he whose eyeballs glow like charcoal. I am the hurler of thunderstones. I am the King who did not die. I am your tormentor and your friend, I have come to redeem you and make you whole. Look upon me and know me, motherless one, you who sprang full grown from the bowels of the earth. You who were among the first to walk the earth with He-who-melts-stones-with-his-breath, He-who-brings-the-harvest and He-who-spreads-sickness-and- death. You, the owner of the forest and keeper of the secrets of the herbs and plants, were the greatest sorcerer of us all. But your vaunted power was not enough was it, my friend…. Osanyin, the sorcerer and owner of the forest looked upon Orunmila with murderous envy. "If I kill Orunmila," he muttered to himself. "I can take his gifts and powers and there will be none among us greater than I.” He retreated into the forest to ponder on and then cast a web of potent spells and enchantments to bring about Orunmila’s demise. But Orunmila, who advised Obatala in the creation of the earth, who was present when man was created and who was the very embodiment of wisdom, was not easily killed, magically or otherwise. He sensed about him lethal enchantments and warded himself. But even he who could ascertain the destinies of each individual, god and man, could not readily see the source of these attacks, so skillful was Osanyin at concealing himself. And Osanyin was relentless. His magical assaults came every day and every hour of the day with a terrible potency fueled by his great envy and rage. Finally, Orunmila appealed to Shango “My vision fails me, O dispenser of justice. I beg, bring your divining powers and add them to mine that we may see who it is that wishes me harm.” Shango, troubled by any disturbance brought about by magic, agreed. Together, they raised a magical mist, and peering into it, they were able to discern Osanyin casting spells. " Ah-h-h” said Orunmili “It is Osanyin. Leave him, Shango, his destiny is a brutal one. Now that I know who it is, I can put my mind to rest.” But Shango was furious. " It is not enough, wise one. The sorcerer must be punished. He gathered up his thunderstones and stalked off before Orunmila could persuade him otherwise. Shango summoned his wife Oya. He explained the situation to her. "We must not only punish him," he told her, "we must strip him of his powers as well!" "Yes, “ she said. “If he would attack the wisest among us, he poses a threat to us all. We have to take from him his knowledge and power! "And then," Shango said slyly. "We can have that knowledge and power all to ourselves." Oya finished. They laughed together as they planned their strategy. Oya entered the Osanyin’s forest. Her sensitive nose picked up the smell of burning herbs. She followed that trail of smoke deep into the forest and soon came upon the sorcerer. He was sprinkling finely ground herbs onto a small camp fire. The flames burned blue. “Who is it that disturbs me while I work?” he demanded, not looking up. “It is Oya. wife of Shango. My nose brought me. I was gathering herbs in your forest and sniffed that interesting smell. What is that smell, sorcerer.” "Some knowledge only brings trouble, wife of Shango. Believe me its best that you do not know.” “Well stop working for a bit and sit and talk with me, Osanyin. Share some of this drink I have pressed from the sugar cane and steeped in the herbs of your forest. That is what brought me to the forest in the first place, to collect more of those wonderful herbs.” She pulled out a gourd from under her cloak and offered him a drink. Osanyin could not resist, especially knowing that it was made from his herbs. He brought the gourd to his lips and drank deeply. The fiery liquor burned a passage straight down to his bowels. “Ahhh, this is quite good, Oya” he said looking now at her as if he had never truly seen her before. “Please, have another drink.” He took another long draught and then another. Soon his eyelids grew heavy. “Come over here and sit by me, pretty one.” He patted the place beside him. The liquor took hold of his tongue. “Let me show you the true hospitality of the forest.” She sat with him, allowing him to hold and fondle her as she waited for the liquor to take affect. Soon the sorcerer began to snore. His head lay on Oya’s shoulder. She placed her hand on his head, spoke a few words of enchantment and began to draw his knowledge from him. But Osanyin had a huge capacity for strong drink and powerful wards against sorcery. Her words brought him immediately out of his drunken stupor. He slapped her hand from his head and grabbed her by her wrists. “So, wife of Shango, this is why you have come. You bring false gifts only to steal my knowledge. Perhaps if you had asked, I might have given some of it to you. Now all you will get is my punishment.” “There you are wrong, sorcerer. It is you who are to be punished.” And Oya, warrior woman that she was, freed her hands and took the fight to Osanyin, beating him about the head and face, biting him, clawing. But the sorcerer was too strong. He grabbed her and flipped her onto her back. As he was about to pummel her, she cried out: “Shango, help me! There was a blow to side of his head on his ear that sent him flying off of Oya and crashing into a tree. He tried to get up but his legs betrayed him. He could not regain his balance. He was dizzy and confused. He tried to gather his wits about him, but could not concentrate. There was this annoying crackling sound, like the buzzing of an insect, in both of his ears. When he reached up to the brush the insect away from his left ear, where the blow had struck, he found that most of the ear was missing. Only a small piece of it remained. "You do pretty well against a woman," bellowed Shango, crashing through the trees and into the fray. "Are you strong enough to take on a warrior." Shango hurled a thunderstone that tore off Osanyin's left arm. Fearing for his life, the sorcerer’s mental clarity returned as did his balance. With the spurting stump spraying blood everywhere, Osanyin leaped up and ran to tree where he kept a gourd that held his most potent and dangerous magical herbs. With his good right arm, he reached for the gourd intending to throw in at his attackers. Before he could throw it, Shango let loose with another thunderstone. The sorcerer turned his head in time to take a glancing blow in the face, losing his left eye and part of the left side of his face. The next thunderstone took the sorcerer’s left leg. The gourd of magical herbs crashed to the ground and shattered. Osanyin thought then that he was going to die. Suddenly, in front of him, shielding him from further punishment was Ogun, the iron god, in full warrior aspect. Ogun was in a loquacious battlerage. “So my brother,” he challenged Shango, “ is this where we will settle our differences? I just happened to be in the forest and heard a commotion. When I saw that it was you and your whore tormenting the sorcerer, I said to myself ‘It is a beautiful day to settle scores; indeed, it is a good day to die!’” Ogun’s sword and battle ax materialized in his hands. He made ready for Shango’s charge. Of all the guardian spirits, he and Shango were evenly matched; each the other’s perfect foil. “This is not your affair, Ogun. The sorcerer must account for his actions against the Wise one. We have come to mete out his punishment” Shango returned. Although he loathed the idea of engaging Ogun with only the weapons he had brought for Osanyin, he could not back down from a challenge. “It seems to me that the account is paid in full. You have taken his eye, his ear, his arm and his leg. Would you take his life as well, O dispenser of justice?” Ogun’s words came out in a snarl of contempt. “What about your own transgressions, whoremonger! Who will hold you accountable for your lechery and wife stealing? Perhaps I should take from you your offending body part!” Before Shango could respond, Oya spoke an enchantment and spirited them both away from the forest back to the safety of their home. She feared Ogun’s wrath for she had once betrayed him, leaving him for Shango. Shango had seduced and stolen his other wife, the lovely Oshun, as well. The brothers were deadly enemies. Oya knew that if they fought, probably both of them would die that day. Shango pretended to be enraged. “ What woman, you would unman me in front of my brother and your former husband?” He hurled a thunderstone at Oya, who ducked it deftly, used to his rages. She ran outside of the house to hide until his anger cooled. Ogun tended the wounded and disfigured Osanyin. He heated his iron sword and cauterized the nub of arm and the stump of leg. The iron god thought that the sorcerer would surely die. When he had done all that he could, he left the sorcerer in the safety of the forest and went on about his business. Osanyin in his delirium called out to the forest, and the spirits of all things growing wild came to him, ministered to him and enriched his spirit. The force that animated the herbs and plants, their efficacies, the healing and, yes, the killing properties, all became one with his life force. He might live out the rest of his days a disfigured amputee, but his gain was much more than his physical losses. He became the spirit of the forest. And his wisdom increased as well. He learned that knowledge and power does not come without cost; it can only be earned, not stolen... The boy opened his eyes. “Do you now know me, Peter-who-is-Osanyin, Owner of the Forest? I am he who caused you great injury?” “I am not Osanyin.” Peter exclaimed. “He is my spirit guide. I am merely his host when he takes my head. He has taught me, though. He has come to me in my dreams. My skill in healing and in magic comes from him. But I am not him!" Shango reached out to touch Peter. Peter flinched at his touch, but allowed the boy place his hand on his head. Shango intoned: “Come forth, O slender one. I humble myself before you, Osanyin! You who move as if you would fall. You who are faster on one leg than many on two You to whom people appeal when things are bad You who knows the very essence of life as it was intended to be You who releases the power of the leaves for medicine and magic. You whom pride disfigured but whose wisdom healed. You are the Owner of the forest." “Who is it that summons me thus?” Peter had slumped into semi-consciousness. The voice that issued forth out of his mouth was like a whisper. “It is I, Shango, owner of the thunderstones. I have come to make you whole.” The entity possessing Peter began to laugh. It was a bitter laugh that sounded like a cough. “So the one who maimed me will make me whole again? Have you found my dismembered body parts, son of Yemoja. Will you restore my eye and ear? Or do you merely wish to torment me some more? Perhaps you still wish to steal my magic?" “No, Osanyin, if anything, I wish to make amends. I was wrong to have maimed you. I was driven by my own lust for the power and knowledge I thought you had. I was sick with greed and envy and came to Orunmila’s aid only for selfish gain. I wish to put all of that right. That is why I have summoned you.” “I don’t understand, thunder god. Is this yet another trick?” “It is not. We who are the old ones are aspects of the Great Mystery. We are the guardian spirits of the human children. We have manifested as forces of nature and from time to time have incarnated among them to teach them and to usher them through their various stages of development. They have thought us to be gods and we have used them poorly. We ride them like horses, craving the feel of life in their skins. We do little to uplift their lives by our contact. Instead we indulge ourselves demonstrating the worst of human emotions and behavior. We continue to act out our old jealousies and enmities using them as our puppets. But they are much more than puppets, Osanyin, just as we are much less than gods. We are, each of us, drawn to those humans who share our essences We are to them as the Great Mystery is to us – and yet we are all apart of the Great Mystery.” “What is this madness you speak, Shango. It has ever been so that we ride these children, that we mount their heads and make them dance in the moonlight. We grace them by our possession. We are their guardians, and we have taken an active part in their everyday lives. By whose authority do you now come and tell me that this must change, that I must change?” “I come with the authority of the Great Mystery. Look at me Osanyin. You are the one among us who is gifted with the knowledge of life’s essence. You know ashe, the divine force within us that grows towards completeness and unity. You know that each of us is but a small, separate and different portion of Olodumare’s ashe. Look at my ashe, Osanyin. Mine and the boy’s is one and the same. I am not possessing this boy. I am the boy with all of my memories and his as well. How could this be if the Great Mystery had not willed it?” Peter-who-is-Osanyin looked at Shango and saw that he spoke the truth. “ But what does this mean, Shango? “It means that we have much work to do. It means that we must play a different role in the lives of our human children if they are to grow and if we are to grow. We must teach them how to embrace life and release that within us that sets us against each other. We must teach them how to acquire and retain all knowledge that is life enhancing and life supporting while releasing all that is self-destructive. We must do this ourselves, Osanyin. That is why we must awaken our human children, our former horses, and live within them, become them as they become us. We must share the burden of the flesh.” “How is this to be done, thunder god?” “Look within this man. You will find your own self-fires burning within his. Blend them and strengthen them… Peter woke. Looking around, he acted as though he was seeing the forest, indeed, the world for the first time. He looked at the boy with wonder in his eyes. “What has happened to me, Shango? I have two eyes, two ears, two arms and two legs. This is wonderful!” “But you have always had these, Peter.” “Yes, you are right. How silly of me. I thought… “Who are you, Peter?” Shango asked, “I am…Peter the healer, no,… I am Osanyin, owner of the forest, no… Am I both?" “It will take some time, Peter, for you to adjust to Osanyin’s memories. But you and Osanyin are one and the same. “Yes, you are right. I can feel him. I can feel me. I am who I am and always was.” Peter sat quietly for a while, propped up against the blue gum tree. Moving from smiles of elation to sorrowful wrinkles of pain, his face registered his thoughts. He was viewing his memories. After a long while, he spoke: And what now, Shango?” “Oh, you will continue to teach me, Peter, as I will teach you. I must fit what seems to be a life eternal into this finite body. You must do the same as will all whom we awaken. The adjustment will be difficult, challenging. I will need your help, and I will need your friendship. We must learn or relearn some of the life’s mysteries -- for Life itself is the Great Mystery. Much of this we hold in our memories. Some will be learned as new. There is much, too, from the old ways that we should keep, preserve and pass on. But there is also much that we must discard. Our spirituality must be lived, this time – acted out in the lives of the bodies we inhabit, in the lives we have become. But enough of this for now. It is not yet evening. There is still time to play.” Shango jumped up into a wrestlers stance. “I am the dread lobelia. I make you sick to your stomach. I cause you to vomit. I make your muscles cramp and twitch. I stretch your pupils wide and cause your heart to palpitate. I will kill you.” “And I am your master. I am heat to your body, cold to your head. I am red wine, strong coffee, ammonia and strychnine. I will take away your power!” And they wrestled until dusk.

 

Homer Plessy: Man/Event
(1862-1925)

I

Homer Plessy:

Man/event, centercore & connection;
Throughput for more legal white racism &
Retrograde justice

Homer Plessy:

A lens through which an entire
American past focused in an experience
Of intense & frightening awareness;

June 7, 1892:

An expectant afternoon bore witness to
A creolization of consciousness;
A syncretism of subjugate fear &
Bleak despair with defiance & rebellious resolve!

June 7, 1892:

A creole man & member, Comité des Citoyens
Stepped into the white only car of the Covington-
Bound East Louisiana Railroad train &
Took his seat.

II

How like spirit is freedom:

For the slave

Whose freedom lies in the latent content of
Dreams; whose reality is mind conditioned to
Reject the personal/universal innerspeak of
Vision.

For the freedman

Whose freedom is like the scent of flowers;
The substance of the wind eluding his propitia-
tory grasp & the poignant verisimilitude of
Certain death.

For the oppressor

Whose freedom lies in interfering without inter-
ference; in controlling without being controlled;
In thinking, judging, believing, acting & sexing
While legally suppressing the same.

III

How long did Homer relish his freedom?

Before reaping the whirlwind; before the conductor
Tried to banish him to the colored car? Before taken
Into vertiginous custody & held in an existential cell;
In a station on boulevarde Elysian Fields

How Long? Not long!

About as long as a flame survives the gale; about as
Long as a drunk honors his pledge & abstains from
Demon rum; about as fast as racist justice could
Railroad his case to the Supreme Court.

How Long? Not long?

About as long as it took the Court’s 8-1 majority to
Decide; about as long as it took to hamstring amend-
ments 13 & 14; about as fast as iron-footed morning
stomps on a black man’s freedom dreams.

Homer Plessy:

Man/event, centercore & connection;
throughput for present-centered black
awareness; seed of civil disobedience!

Emmitt Till:
Shaping a People’s Dream

O distant sky, wide earth, vast seas,
Do not crush and don't destroy the wicked.
Let them destroy themselves!
Itshak Katzenelson

1941:
Gunnar Myrdal surveys southern whites on miscegenation:

What do you think the Negro mostly wants
From integration?

“Cain’t you see?” They said.

“Nigras want nothing more, nothing less
Than to marry & fornicate with white women!”

What he didn’t ask:

“Why do you feel this way?”

That terrifyingly tumescent query would tear, rend & rupture:

The membranous tissue of lies that partly or
Completely occludes the rabbit hole to certain
Sexual disintegration & mental sadism;

The plausible reasons given to explain away
Purely phobic behavior driven by the prurient
Delusions of mass psychosis.

False sensate perceptions elicited by what drug, what wish or dark phantasmal
desire?

The brutish African with his abnormally large penis
Lasciviously leering at the fleshy contours of whiteness;
Breaching, eroticizing racial borders -- mothers, sisters,
Daughters -- no matter; seeking to desecrate what was
Proclaimed unsullied -- the whited receptacle for small but
Sacred fetishes.

See him, that mortal black behemoth, mount the helpless
Rapunzel, climb her hair, take her roughly, rending,
Tearing & stretching, his sloshing pleasure drowning out
her screams --

while a diminuitive white boy, humiliated by his small
endowment looks on thinking ruinous thoughts;
Complicated, conflicted thoughts that make him want to
Kill the beast and rid the world of its kind; to string him
Up on a poplar tree, boil him in oil, strip off his flesh
& castrate the offending member. Or failing to do so
Becomes himself degraded, a human toilet, a cleaner of
Ejaculate, a cuckold and a slave;

while a little white girl, bewildered by unwanted sanctimony,
Ambivalently totters on her pedestal, looks on not knowing
What to do or think. Conflicted, she would civilize the beast
like Shamhat of old; with the sweetness of temple harlotry.
But religion succors not her lust, only her guilt. She yearns
for, is repulsed by what she sees & aroused, makes the vision
obligatory for sexual functioning. She plans furtive liaisons
she can disavow if caught; pawns beast & sexual intimacy
for virtue.

1941:
Emmitt Louis Till is born. No avatar of man-the-whole is he; just a little black boy,
raised without a father, who in untimely death gave conscious shape to a people’s
dream.

A people’s unconscious, massed for action, becomes aware
of a light in its collective darkness; a luminous phosphorescence
flitting, hovering over swampy ground caused by spontaneous
combustion of hopes unrealized and dreams deferred.

1955
Emmitt Louis Till, a pawn in a cosmic chess match, a piece of the lowest
value blunders onto life’s eighth rank & is promoted to a symbol of power.

Went down to Mississippi ridin’ the Southbound train
Went down to Mississippi ridin the Southbound train
And there found Death awaiting
To take me home again!

Three days in Money was all it took. Money, Mississippi. Three days
for the whimsical innocent, traipsing along the crags of phobic southern
life, without regard for hidden peril, to trespass racial borders, to stir the
dragon of sexual psychosis.

Perhaps he got caught up in the glamour of southern serendipity. Thought
he was in a Humphrey Bogart movie. Thought like a fourteen year old.
Thought pretty Carolyn Bryant was Lauren Bacall & that her conflicted
look meant:

You know how to whistle, don't you, Emmitt? You just put your
lips together - and blow."

Emmitt Louis Till, or maybe some other faceless black phantasm, escaped
Missus Bryant’s psychotic subterranean chamber of horrors & whistled.
She gave him up to redeem her virtue; to save husband Roy and in-law J.W.
from the whirlpools that tear the fabric of white southern mind and body.

Three days later they came for him. Before day on a Sunday, retributive
white wrongness snatched the boy out of Mose Wright’s house & taught
him a lethal lesson.

Two redneck paladins of white womanhood
Killed a young buck because they could!

The Mississippi delta, pristine symbol of soul merging with the absolute,
Of spiritual nourishment, tasted corruption; tasted the desecration of
Adolescent whimsy – a bloated fourteen-year-old corpse not worth a
goddamned whistle. The good old boys had a good laugh when they
dragged the mutilated body out of the Tallahatchie. Said :

“Aint it just like a Nigger to try to swim the river wit a cotton gin fan
chained to his back.”

His Mama cried:

"Look what they’ve done to my son!"

Put his reliquiae & American insanity on immediate display for the world
to see. If a thousand, it was fifty thousand black Chicagoans on that grim
September day who looked upon that body; those remains:

A people’s unconscious, massed for action, gravitates toward a gory
Image, becomes identified with yet another cruciate symbol; an emblem
Of suffering & shame…

They marched around that coffin in Robert’s Temple of God, some passing
out from the sight, their footfalls raising prescient echoes of marches yet to
come, some shouting as their inner walls of fear and trepidation broke & came
a’tumbling down.

Meanwhile, back in Mississippi:

Nine white farmers, two white carpenters & one white insurance agent
deigned not to disturb their ancestors nor turn them in their graves;
Took minutes to acquit the accused in spite of the sudden emanence
of radiant courage from Moses "Dar He" Wright who fingered them in
open court, or the damning testimony of Willis Reed who forfeited his
sanity when reaching asylum in Chicago.

A people’s unconscious, massed for action, moves; releases power:

Bends the mind of an Alabama seamstress who got sick and tired
Of being sick and tired until she becomes Spirit in act ;
Floods the ego of a young Georgia preacher who identifies
with a glory image of freedom until he becomes Spirit in act;

Opposes the unctuous whore and witch whose spirit endures in
America’s psychic vineyards; the susceptible ahabs, the Roy Bryants
And J.W. Milams who don hats or hoods, suits or sheets, literally &
figuratively to fend off morbid flaccidity;

Becomes fuel for an endless journey of collective growth…

We give thanks, Emmitt, for your immolation, much like the faithful who,
venerate agony, transubstantiate flesh to bread & blood to wine. We offer up
Your body that our celebrant collective memory may take, eat & remember!

We give thanks, Emmitt, for the gift you have given us, first to move us
Up out of our apathy and resignation into anger, then to help us release
That anger into self-affirming action. We need to remember!

In remembering, we can revisit your bloated visage again & again, not to
Wallow in inertia & recrimination, but to test our emotional wounds to see
if they are healing; to see if we have outgrown our need to build collective
identity around past atrocity.

In remembering, we can, if we choose, give up our grudges, resentments,
hatreds and self-pity, knowing that we do not need them to punish those
who have hurt us; knowing that we were never truly victims.

In remembering , Emmitt, we can do honor to your sacrifice, drawing on its
fullness & power to rediscover strengths we’ve always had; relocate our
limitless capacity to understand & accept others & ourselves.

In remembering, Emmitt, we can heal & forgive.

REMEMBERING MARTIN

…His spirit must have nightly floated free
Though still about his hands he felt his chains.
Who heard great "Jordan roll"? Whose starward eye
Saw chariot "swing low"? And who was he
That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh,
"Nobody knows de trouble I see"?
James Weldon Johnson

No supernal presentation marked your birth. No special alignment of known planets. No shield of David pressed upon a grand cross no eight pointed star. No angelic hosts no Magi & none foretold your coming. Yet were you born the first son & second child into a black middle-class family of kings. The son of the son of a preacher, three & twenty days past the winter solstice, in the season of christ & caesar, on 501 Auburn Avenue NE. Atlanta. No one knew then, Michael, that you would change your name; assume a nom de guerre for your appointed social role: Michael to Martin, the quintessential protesting cleric – not against a corrupt universal church & the purchased forgiveness of sin, but against inertial forms of personal & social living that resist acceleration and change; against the forms of overt & institutional racism that seek indulgences; the remission of punishment. No one knew then, Michael, that you would be the focus, The coxswain, the shepherd of the transforming & creative response of Spirit to a disparate & disintegrated people; rootless, aroused & demanding Africans wandering in the wilderness of America’s intellectual generalizations, formulas & standardizing regulations – suffering in the midst of plenty. No one knew that you would utter a new logos, a new word of power to project on all unintegrated Americans; unleash the power of a dream. Neither did you, Martin. Perforce the Morehouse College Maxim: To Uplift the Human Race Through Responsible Citizenship was naught But a subliminal goad when you tarried there. Nor did Crozer & a divinity degree bring sudden disclosure of the meaning of your destiny. No, non-disclosing Spirit piqued the course of your life’s events. That same Spirit gave resonance to your message; made it the answer to the needs of the millions unable to accept, to endure American social living. It focused & projected a new kind of humanity, a new kind of personhood; it activated new human faculties. But it revealed itself to you, first, when the stubborn courage of an Alabama seamstress, too tired to give up her seat for oppression – whose wholeness unmasked in an instant of resistance her essential identity – induced in you a charge you were compelled to keep; raised your vibratory rate, made you shine with an inner light – the light that alone integrates the chaos of the world. The rest, as they say, is vulgate history. That light, though, was the substance of your message & your dream. We clamored for freedom, but you dancing, like a drum major at the head of the parade, like a will–o’–the–wisp, showed us that freedom isn’t free; that it is dearly bought & paid in the often bloody coin of personal integrity & responsibility. Your message and your dream was about being free & whole; about discovering one’s true identity; about refusing to be turned around or away, steadfastly adhering to life, love and freedom as interchangeable elements of righteousness. Spirit has acted, Martin, in and through your life. Has impregnated your dream; bestowed its most wondrous gift to a confused & oppressed humanity – that divine spark which arouses, animates and sustains; the honey'd taste of freedom!

 

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©2005 by Joseph D. McNair

Web Author: Joseph D. McNair Copyright © 2005 by Joseph D. McNair -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED