Black Family Triptych

By Ian Scott

Preface

Greetings and salutations, you beautiful, wonderful people!

For a moment, I would ask you to dislodge 

from this drab continuum 

that passes shackles for logic 

Cause really what’s logical about:

wake up, eat, work, eat, shower, sleep,

wake up, eat, work, eat, shower, sleep,

wake up again, eat again, work again, eat again, shower again, sleep again,

take your appointed day(s) off numbing 

your numbness to a monotonous unbearable world?

Days slipping by 

the future locked away, 

that ain’t who we are!

We are stars and dust 

We are artful souls 

We are Black 

The present’s not enough,

we must keep moving. 

So kick back with me a minute or two

let’s take a trip through time and space, paint panels 

of our family, 

our parents and siblings 

and aunties and uncles 

and cousins and grandparents

and friends and mentors

and the lunch ladies and janitors 

and revolutionaries and teachers 

and elders and ancestors,

all the living and dead,

the community of souls.

To love them all

we must start from the beginning 

I

They say it began with a chant and a hum

And a Black hand laid on a native drum 

First it was pure, irreducible dark 

then five fingers rolled on the drum and Bam!

Heat and light and dust whirling, whirling 

pressed down into stars and planets 

expanding out in numbers beyond belief 

and there in the hurly-burly: Earth

chaos amidst chaos

a millennium of magma roiling 

then quiet, then land, then 

the first tree

and Lo, from the root came these brilliant souls, 

glistening faces Black as the void 

tongued together with the names

Bantu, Zulu, Watusi,

Ashanti, Herero, Grebo,

Ibo, Masuto, Nyasa,

Ndumbo, Umunda, Bobo,

Kongo, Hobo, Kikuyu,

Bahutu, Mossi, Kisii,

Mbangi, Johami, Fongo,

Bandjoun, Bassa, Yoruba, 

Gola, Ila, Mandingo, 

Mangbeta, Yosee, Bali, 

Angoli, Biombii, Mbole,

Malinke, Mende, Masai,

Felatah, Kru, Moor.

And from them:

Kaldi cradling his goats

stooped low and biting from the cacao bush

sustaining us evermore.

The djembe beats blossomed 

a lexicon to talk 

war & hate & love & joy.

The Iberian Renaissance, bearing seeds of tomorrow 

flowering new canons,

new technology, new empires

and then

II

The deep immortal human wish 

the timeless will:

Pirates landing to the West

trading guns, silks, and metals for all 

for kin 

Raiders razing homes 

and driving coffles 

to shore, to the barracoon, to the hold

where avatars of Life and Death melted into tar

that pooled on the floor 

In dark waters ancestors sculpted

marl and stone in the deep

taught sharks to swim 

gave the world order

But then

They stood fast against the hurricane 

that aimed to buffet to bone

fanning it back with 

memories of human family  

and when tongues were bashed from heads 

there were a thousand other ways to say freedom 

Through battleplans in song

maps in scalps

that led to jungle nations 

where magic lived again 

And throughout the sword came back to cut and cleave

the people to stalks but each time 

they grew back thicker 

till razors sprouted from stems 

and made the whipping hand bleed 

and know fear 

and the fallen were gathered 

and they kissed the bodies

wept only for that it took so many generations 

to produce them

Balmed the gashes 

with art and warm meals and safe shelters 

and kept nursing the seed for the new epoch 

and somewhere in that nursing 

I was born 

and you 

and you 

Can you see us in the constellation?

We grew old and talented 

and did our pieces to water the seed 

and have good times while we could 

and then 

III

Whisper, listen, whisper, listen. Whispers say we’re free 

Rumours flyin’, must be lyin’. Can it really be?

Can’t conceive it, can’t believe it. But that’s what they say.

Slave no longer, slave no longer, this is Freedom Day. 

Evil words 

like own  owner  owning  

were stricken from the record 

The Gods came back

with a 400-year 

backlog of gifts

The children grew up

became airplane mechanics and farmers and magicians

became dreams come true  

The chains rusted 

and fell to pieces

and we threw arms up 

and around each other

dumb laughter echoed through the empty prisons

before they exploded.

and then 

The space ships.

We averted the cosmic nightmares 

of capitalism spilling out across the void

more New Worlds for subjugation

while the unfit for work 

choked and perished under dark clouds

We created new gizmos 

with winding parts and flashing lights

to slowly answer the questions 

set aside once NASA’s rocket technology was enough 

to deliver a payload 

to turn the nascent African rebellions to glass

But we did not use the knowledge

to reopen the frontier 

or displace the dirty work on somewhere else

or to extend life beyond measure.

The ugly deaths were gone

and we understood each passing year as a gift

and the final transition as revelation,

not severance.

There was nothing left to fear

Telepathic thought 

generated a new age of shared understanding

We built the warp drive,

saw the first ships stretch and hold, 

for a moment, before blinking out 

to meet whatever waited beyond the Oort Cloud.

We grew out into the stars

and into each other,

a fabric weaving itself through the tendrils of nebulas, 

and because nothing could keep us from our fullest selves,

shook off the old names and genders

and this mass,

this Black living mass

collapsed back into the void

But even there it didn’t really stop.

It just kept on going.