High School Poetry

I wrote this poem my senior year of high school. It’s ironic. I think I turned this into a publication during college. These questions and feelings stuck with me then and are still with me now. The stuff I was struggling with then has never left me. Now I’m more aware of it. Now it’s gotten more complicated. Now I can read stuff like this, shake my head about how crazy it is that I was tune with myself, and journey on.

Blacker than I was in the Summer

T.O.O. 

As the sun penetrates the dark skin on me

I’m wandering what the light nation will see.

They probably see the sun indulging me

And my skin changing like the leaves on an autumn tree.

They see my skin getting darker, getting closer to the place

Where I’m as dark as my ancestors in skin and in face.

They see the black kid, who probably has bad parents,

The thug, the ignorant, materialistic; it’s apparent

That to them the darker I am, the more I don’t know

The deeper I’m not, the more I don’t flow

The fine places in the future, they know I won’t go.

The decent qualities in me, they know I won’t show.

 

The dark nation says they see all that other stuff,

To put it plainly, they see me as not being black enough.

They think I “live too good” like my past wasn’t rough.

They hear me speak, automatically I sound too white,

Just because I’m really focused, my future’s too “bright.”

They say, “You’re turning too white, look your skin’s getting light.”

 

Oh so that’s what it’s about,

My skin’s too light for you, so I need to go out.

Speak blacker, think blacker go soak up the sun.

You think if I go out in the real world that will really be done?

Do you truly think if I experience what you’ve been through

I’ll be blacker, not whiter, not myself, but like you?

 

As the sun penetrates the dark skin on me,

I’m wondering what the light nation would see.

And as the dark nation says what they want me to be,

I’m asking the whole nation, can I just be me?