DPC POETRY: High heels and lipstick

Editor’s note:  Welcome to the second edition in the series, “DPC Poetry”, a collaborative undertaking of DNO and Domnichen Poetic Circle (DPC). This new feature on DNO is published every Friday. 

-High heels and lipstick-

BEEN a warrior
for so long
soldiering on
with high heels  and lipstick.
Sometimes,
often more times,
having to shift the weight
off my weary feet
from one to the other.

THE burden comparable
to the load
in my belly
in my heart
on my consciousness.
Injustice
repeatedly, in voluminous
forms – an onslaught
on the resilience
of people
who carry Melanin;
breaking them
down, rendering
too many
clueless;
numbed
by the
reality
of their
collective fate.
THEY do not know
or
some even care
of the master plan
to distinguish
their existence.
So,
they
remain
obsessed
with

the material
instead of the
educational
spiritual
cultural,
at a time
when
knowledge
is power
we are
rendered
powerless
with no
political
social
economic
capital
control.
DESPITE
The cry
of leaders
who for decades
have raised fists in
the air,
planted seeds
of
consciousness
resistance
resilience
for our cause;
either being imprisoned
silenced
or surrendering;
some
dying by
bullets
or
disease –
their
message
to the
masses
cease
and
rot
as they do,
in their graves:
in places
we don’t even visit
to pay reverence
to them
for fighting
for the lives
of the next
seven generations.
THE ring
of the alarm
is so loud
yet
we are deafened
or
defeated.
Either way,
change
needs to come
and soon
because
fear builds in me
especially
when
I see how
the children,
the young ones,
have become
frightfully
disconnected;
their
sensibilities
numbed
sugared down
drugged
weakened
hypnotized,
right before our eyes.
MESSAGES
In media
keep pumping
causing or
adding to
their
desensitisation.
Heroes,
become
‘de gunman’.
Sheroes become
‘da teen mom’.
IT feels
like we are at the
bottom of our
fall
plummeting
from
having built
nations
so
strong.
To not having one
we all recognize as our own
so
what
can
one girl
in lipstick
and high heels
do
when the cognizance of it all
gets to you?
DO you keep trudging on
or allow the magnitude of it get you down?
You bend on your knees
to the Creator
ancestors and gods
and pray for strength
clarity
focus
patience
will
guidance
and more.
Some will tell you
It’s not your responsibility,
turning their back on the calamity;
and yet they claim
Christianity;
while clamoring
for the biggest ride
biggest house
competing with the Jones’
for what they have.
BUT regardless ,
my community, my race, humankind
I’m indebted to.
If my ancestors
had just given up
I would not have existed
To even bring this up!
Esi Aya©