Yesterday's Tomorrow

There is what we lived and there is what we lived for.

I remember the day I finally felt alive. I was standing in the Women’s Library on the south side of London. I was wearing a blue shirt that said, “Would You Like to Smurf Around.”

The irony is Smurf is what my family calls me. That name always reminds me of my youth.

I had on running shoes, maybe I was prepping for a journey; maybe I was ending one. We walked through the library, I ran my hands across the aged books feeling bumps of different magnitudes along the way.

Then Lizzy gave out the kinds of scream you have when you have an epiphany. We all ran over to see what she had discovered.

In a glass case, that shielded the world from tainting what was my moment, there was a hand written magazine. Every oooed and aaahed. I was too far behind them to see what they were looking at and one second from the moment I’d feel like me.

Looking through the glass I read, I know it is nothing, but it is my nothing. It was hand written on a paper magazine.

It carried the feeling of a personal love not transcribed by some machine, but by my own penmanship that belongs to me and my nothing.

I’m pretty sure my heart stopped. My mind flashed back to papers I’d written in college that came back with failing grades and comments telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about, my writing skills lacked polish and my words meant nothing.

I made a vow to myself to never stifle what I had to say because someone didn’t agree. I left feeling rejuvenated, calm, free…me.

When I ended my summer in London, I went to work at a magazine and lived with my grandmother. When I came in the house my Grandmother came out, “Smurfet is that you?” “No, it’s Shirley,” I responded.

I have yet to write my own magazine, book or have my words heralded as legendary. But that’s what I’m living for.

Always and Forever

When most utter for richer or poorer the hope is that they never have to experience it. Imagine feeling the sting of infidelity, unemployment, autistic children, locked up boys who fell short of expectations and hearing, I want a divorce, there in your white dress.

At the altar you’re flying with the clouds, 10 years into the marriage, the world has crashed down on you. But those words are replayed back to you…for better or for worse.

I have seen true love.

When drug addictions, extreme poverty, homelessness, and 9 kids, my parents lost came along, no one packed their bags, they remembered a vow they never made—to have and to hold forever.

My parents never got married, but they stayed true to each other. Three days old, my father who lived in the neighborhood, looked in her crib and said my mother was the most beautiful baby he’d ever seen and that he’d marry her one day.

My Granddad tried to chase him away and he’s spent the last 36 years they’ve been together still trying. But their love is unbreakable. If you ask my mother to sing you a song, in her strong alto voice, the only song that comes from her heart, she’ll sing, “inseparable…yes baby…that’s what we are.”

When my mother turned 18 my father bought her a red corvette. They had it all. They had 4 houses, all the cars you could imagine and took trips all around the country. Money was not an object. When they battled a drug addiction, the money was gone, but love still persist.

I asked my parents why they never got married and my father said, “Because it would hurt me too much if my wife ever left me.” My mother started laughing like I’d never heard her laugh.

“One time I told your Dad that I was leaving and he looked at me and said, where we going. I knew that day I was stuck with him for life.”

This conversation we had on the porch of an abandoned house they were squatting. They have taught me everything I needed to know about love, life and loyalty. So while my parents did not raise me and have made some decisions that have negatively impacted me I am eternally grateful for the lesson their love taught me.

We ride together, we love together. I'm your's for life.

Bros Before Woes

My brother became a super hero this week.

As he eloquently stated at the end of his message, a little boy made it from Woodrow Wilson and Elmhurst to the pulpit at Triumph Church.

Rewind 15 years and you’ll see that same boy shuffling his feet like James Brown singing “I Have a Testimony.” He did more than sing the solo, he prophesied into his life. Yet to reach puberty, in a high pitch he sang, “I have a testimony, God made me whole…” The choir agreed in harmony.

He preached his first message as an associate minister at a 12,000 member church on its South campus about using what you already have to get where you need to go.

Real super heroes are the ordinary people who grow up in ghettos and soar above expectations. Capes are dingy sheets wrapped around 9-year-old neck that one day could be his rap sheet or his reminder that the things behind you propel you into tomorrow.

Walking down Hubbell from the park we used to race to on the way to school chatting he reminded me that it was his desire to pastor a church one day.

Watching him in the pulpit I say him prepping to one day fly.


I‘ve always believed that when you feed your passion you will never be hungry. He inspired me to go back to the project I started a about a year ago, daily writing, until I write my first book.


I have always competed with my brother, because I’ve always been more athletic, good looking, (He is shaking his head and disagreeing right now), and intelligent.

But today, I am more proud.

Blame Game

“Who else is gonna hire a man who went to jail for killing somebody; somebody you have to call to wake and pick up…nobody” J

Systems are not designed to fix the problems they create. So you create a new system to fix the old one. The lineage goes something like this:

The State begat the education system
The education system begat the jail system and GED programs
The jail system begat the prison system which had twins, welfare and child support

You could contest that order, and I could rearrange it but family is family and they all carry the same legacy: failing urban communities.

At the forefront of every media outlet is the failing school system. It’s supposed to prepare students for their next step in life, whether it’s further education or work. If they don’t get an adequate education life forces them to move on to the next step, unprepared.

So when Ray Ray and Nique Nique apply for jobs and school and are unsuccessful we blame them. In reality fault lies with a system that was designed to fail them. (Yes parenting and self-motivation play a part in this. We all know someone who overcame a bad public school education, but that’s why we call them overcomers.) When they have no money and nothing to do they run around committing petty crimes and conceiving kids who will be born into the same system.

The jail system and GED programs which are supposed to rehabilitate, teach lessons and provide second chances don’t. The teachers who work in GED programs are mostly retired public school teachers who came from the same system who failed these people in the beginning. They are trained to teach 12-year-old 7th graders not 30-year-old 7th graders.

If the State would have done its job the first time the Department of Human Services wouldn’t be overflowing.

It’s amazing that Michigan has such deep budget problems. If you spend the bulk of your money re-correcting the school system’s wrong you don’t have the money to fix it.

But states like Massachusetts and Connecticut are known for having great school systems and the largest populations of affluent resident.

It’s an old principle, if you get it right the first time you never have to do it again. Does this mean I’m saying if the state created a better educational system we could eliminate crime, not one hundred percent, but it’d be a heck a lot less.

I read it in Mrs. Swayne’s classroom when I was in the 6th grade on a red and yellow poster: Education is the key to life. Which makes lack of education….

For The Love Of Detroit

If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

No, seriously, if you can make it in Detroit, a city that is painted as, well you’ve seen the picture, you’re Super Duper Man and Woman.

Does that make our success stories belong in comic books, with action heroes and sheroes because they made it in his bleak town, escaping the grip of Mr. Poverty, Queen Welfare and Maximus Minimumus Educational Value Kid?

No. It makes us Detroiters.

Detroit is the birthplace of pioneering. Motown changed the music industry and while Atlanta is a mecca for today’s musical talent, Jermaine Dupri had to call them the new Motown.

Henry Ford envisioned more than the car, he redefined the mass production process. And if you try and convince me that there is anything better than a Faygo Red Pop I will push you off our scenic international border.

Chrysler painted a well-rounded picture of the feelings that resonant with Detroiters.

We love our city and we’re not pretending we don’t have problems. We are learning to bench press our issues so they make us stronger.

It’s time out for, “someone who has never even been here,” as the Michigan man’s voice stated over Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” baseline, telling people about our story.

We get so strong-willed about our city we argue and nearly sever relationships over a Chrysler 200 commercial disputing its impact on the economics of our city. (I’ve seen the Facebook arguments.)

We are the big brother city. As cute and cuddly as New York, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta are, they walk in our footsteps, trying to be like their big brother.
Big brothers and sisters know when to let the younger have its shine as we prep for our comeback.

While our population dwindles, the few who remain have been learning lessons to duck and dodge adversity from every aspect of city government.

Throw your punch education, kick us in the side police corruption, trip us dirty politicians, but when you get done you had better duck, because we’re coming back…pow, right in the kisser.

Words Will Hurt You

Niggas are black men.

Now before you start with black women are niggas too—and we all know some white people who are blacker than us—l am not talking about having nigga tendencies. I’m referring to a socially lived hidden stereotype placed on the black man as being the plague of the black community.

Watch an old movie, they call men niggers, or some variation, and women colored girls.

Fifty years later black leaders decide to bury the word “nigga.” No offense to the NAACP but black men have purposefully been buried for centuries.

They buried niggas by taking away their right to be fathers to their children during slavery, made their wives conduits to birth more slave babies. They buried them by lynching, burning their houses on fire and made them defenseless when protecting their women.

Today, they bury them under child support, unfair judicial practices, assumptions that jail will “rehabilitate them” when they’re 15 years old by placing them in a prison to be mentored by criminals.

In their community black leaders on television bury them, again. Tyler Perry makes some movie that he thinks helps but really demonizes the black man and paints black women as damsels waiting for the right nigga to save her.

To every black woman, we live in a society where everyone challenges the worth of the black man. If you don’t uplift him whether he’s your son, friend, man or brother, don’t ever expect someone else to.

They help us black women mourn their deaths. They herald the black woman as “superwoman.” She is strong enough to raise her kids all by herself and blah blah blah. Don’t you know that before a convicted murderer can be released on parole he has to apologize to the family of his victim?

Thanks for apologizing by plastering on new papers that 75percent of black babies are born to unwed mothers. Thank you for depriving nearly half of all black women from ever having a whole home because so many black men are locked up or out of jail and still imprisoned to what incarceration made them. What is your apology to the black children who will be raised by bitter mothers in fatherless homes? Is it a failing urban education system that places them in the same cycle as their parents? No, really…thanks.

In order for a black man to really be something he has to learn how to act white. But over time when a black man becomes too powerful, he has to be shut down.

When Fredrick Douglass began learning to read he became a threat to his slave master and so on the field he whipped Mr. Covey’s butt with pride in his blows.

Today they bury our fathers; tomorrow they will borrow our sons. Cycles are so harmful because they are natural, it takes hardly any effort to continue to a cycle.

Now to every defender of the NAACP. I do understand they have worth in our community. But burying the N-Word was nothing but a display of how we spend frivolous money.

I know a nigga they could have given 1/10th of the money to who would have kept his business a float that gives young black males a job, a role model, and teaches them work ethic and respect.

I know a nigga they could have given $2000 to help buy his first car so that he could go visit his son. When the pitter patter of feet came he didn’t run, he pulled his pants up, turned his hat frontwards and lived up to his responsibility.

They used stick and stones to break our bones and one word to tear our community apart.

Can I add a large fry?

You started with a donut for breakfast and from there it was a binge of greasy and fatty foods that pleased your taste buds, and disappointed your shape.

Two years after college the thickness turns to fat. Filling out jeans with big bones was no longer an excuse, but you only harmed yourself.

When the doctor checked your blood sugar levels you got new family members, diabetes and it’s first cousin high blood pressure, it’s sister obesity which gives you bad knees, and summons you to the couch because only the fridge is worth walking to.

But you only harmed yourself, right? Wrong.

How are diseases introduced into families?

It only takes one to force every person in their lineage to utter, "Yes, high blood pressure and diabetes run in my family." They won't add that accolade to your contributions in the family's history, but everyone will thank you as they try to avoid the plus size section.

My grandmother is approaching 87 years, and she doesn't make green beans without ham hocks and fried is always the first option. We should stop using the excuse that our grandparents turned out fine, they didn't grow up eating Happy Meals.

Happy meals in the south were home cooked, not processed.

Don’t be the one to start the downward cycle of obesity related issues in your family. And if it’s already there, stop the cycle.

Save your family’s life. Eat better, exercise and live longer.

Beautiful Girl

Sometimes I write poems. When you find your muse in life it makes writing much easier. So, here is something my muse inspired.


I told her she was beautiful
she believed me
hiked up her D's into doubles
added strut to her walk
made haste to the corner
She told me I was beautiful.
He asked her the price
she responded...
misery
strife
Sold her self cheap
Like buying Tiffany's from Tiffani with an "I"
Like buying the matrix from simply looking to the sky
See sometimes we buy things that are free
She thought buying stilettos meant buying confidence
She forgot I told her she was beautiful.
She will be beautiful
She strutted that sh**
don't let the money make you
not red bottoms but pink
because it is the foundation of her feet
Like Santa Claus is the color of believing,
sunsets are the color of deceiving.
So she kept strutting to a room
reached her yellow hand to the gold door knob
turned
no admittance
upset and blue
Let me in,remember I know you.
I gave you green
poured into your pocket's soul
Remember we sat by coral reefs
Fusioned furious imaginations of your long gone but not lost brother
We painted the town together
No, she replied
I left you,
lost you,
on purpose.
See you forgot what you looked like
Thought beauty was in your innocence
But it was only a part of the way that was paved by reconciling the past
Merging your dreams with your panics and screams
Saying you were beautiful was meant for your future not today
Come back when you're all grown up and beautiful
Like you were yesterday

Journey to Brixton

I never knew the Atlantic Ocean was so small.

Brixton neatly places Africa and the Caribbean together in one city and finally there is a town big enough for two sheriffs. As an African American travelling to London for a summer I went looking for English culture instead I found an arena of Blackness I didn’t know exist.

England is known as the fashion capital of the world, a place for high tea and of course the queen. But all the travel guides I viewed before my study abroad in London forgot to tell me about Brixton.

Before I could even use my broken British accent I practiced by listening to Idris Elba they already knew I was an American girl. Still, they didn’t turn me away; they welcomed me into their city and showed me London from their eyes.

In Brixton you can buy jerk chicken on one corner and black soap on the other. You can dance to reggae and rap to djembe beats until the British cops roll in, and then you realize Brixton is a lot like Harlem.

For Blacks, Brixton is a cultural epicenter that embodies our music: jazz, rap, reggae, gospel and hip hop. But for British cops it’s known as the most crime ridden part of England. Well, forget what the cops say, Brixton is amazing.

Brixton was just what I needed to complete my English journey.

In West London I got dapper with the British women. I dressed in a much higher fashion than I ever knew I was capable of. I mixed pallets of gray, green and navy with salmon and crème. But in Brixton I got to kick it with the people who like to listen to classic James Brown records and can make a mean cornbread.

Our style of dress was the absolute norm. The brother with the long dreads, Yankee fitted cap, and sandals, that’s right sandals, was more than fresh, it was symbolic.

The street markets are so overwhelming with products that only we know how to use it makes you want to spend every pound in your pocket.

Brixton made me feel like a worldwide bond of blackness between the Africans, Caribbeans and African Americans had just been made it could never be broken. We were all simply black, enjoying the rich culture that connected us all.

When all of our attention was drawn away by Obama’s picture on a young boy’s shirt, crafted from rhinestones, there was no doubt that our hearts were on a simultaneous beat. They explained to me that they couldn’t vote for him but they had cast a vote of respect from their hearts.

Now, we were open to each other, free to speak about anything we wanted.
In an Afro-Caribbean restaurant, eating what was similar to soul food, just with a whole lot more soul, men and women shared opened their hearts to me.

They shared their stories about how they journeyed as families to England and have found new opportunities and community. They spoke of their love for the Black leaders we have in America and what divided Africans and Caribbeans for years and what eventually brought them together, respect.

I made a promise to a charming woman named Carol that I would do my best to tell the world what a magnificent place Brixton is.
Brixton is more than amazing.

It’s one of the treasures of the worldwide Black community. It taught me to appreciate Blackness in every way it comes. Whether it’s tapered, dread-locked, braided, permed or in a fro, Black is internationally beautiful.

You always need a foundation...

As I walked on a tour of London, we traced the steps of early suffragist Emily Pankhurst. Many of the buildings in which she had lived, fought and used the resources to make gains for women, are gone.

They have been remodeled, torn down, burned down and abandoned. This really stuck out to me.

No matter how badly a building can be burned, remolded or have whatever happened to them they are still the places where change happened.

Those places where Emily and her sisters walked and worked can always be built upon but the progress the original structures made will always be there. While the Pankhurst sisters were creating change in their environment in that time nothing else could be built there until they left.

When you create change, it will forever be created.

It reminds me of the Civil Rights movement.

No matter how many houses and places where Dr. King lived are abandoned they will always be the place that facilitated change for him, and me.

Revolution starts in some place. That place could be in someone's basement, mind, a coffee shop; all that matters is that it started and they can never be taken away.

As we walked through South London I wondered if those individuals knew where they were, the heart of the Women's Movement.

Their steps were only taken there because of what someone else did.

I want to make memorable steps.