Yesterday When I Was CRAZY

Chapter 2 - Born Angry

My poem, Already Angry, captures the impact of the anger-laden DNA of African-Americans in the United States. I wrote this poem as I was hanging up from a very stressful conversation with a friend. I realized that my anger meter was on nine about to hit ten. In a moment of self-preservation, I was gripped by the thought: I am already angry. So I can't get mad. The poem continues:

I am already angry.
For things in my past
That crushed my soul
And gave my heart a blast
Now I wear an indelible mask.

Is angry behavior essential to our spiritual evolution or self-limiting to our soul satisfaction? Ask yourself this question? Then let your soul answer.

Chapter 1 - The Veil Is Lifted: Miss Belle

The day that the same babysitter of my childhood remarked that she was surprised that I turned out so well and had a nice child, too, was cathartic for me. In that startling moment, I was clueless about the origins of her commentary. It was her first time meeting my daughter, who was eight years old at the time. She had not seen me either in a long time.

Miss Belle, I will call her, admired the earrings I was wearing, which I promptly gave to her. She replied, "I cannot believe you turned out to be generous too." Being cast as a "bad little girl" in her mind meant I had to be selfish as well. Sorry, it just wasn't so!

Chapter 3 - Dis-eases and Diagnoses

There would be no tears for little "Peepeye". Punishment would always be deeply held and invisible to the naked eye. Perhaps this is the reason I was always "squinting" or "peeping". Maybe this is why my Mother began calling me "Peepeye".

My guess today is that I really had a vision problem. I was wearing glasses by the 5th grade. I imagine I had impaired vision much earlier than was diagnosed. Or maybe I was just a quirky little kid.

In any case, early in my childhood, I learned not to cry.

Chapter 4 - The Great Taboo - Crazy

So the label of "crazy" came and went throughout my life. Sometimes it came all the way in and stole my soul's life force. Sometimes "crazy" was just a fit of confusion. All too often, the incidents that gave life to "crazy" were traumatic and overwhelming to my nervous system. The fractures piled up over time. When the dam broke, my life as I knew it, was no more. I would have to start over and over and over to regain my health, my dignity and my purpose.

Chapter 12 - What About Yesterday?

Yesterday is a break, a siesta, if you will, from the challenges of the present. In the world of overwhelm, yesterday is peace. The lines become blurred in our linear experience.

Yesterday is a colored man who births a Negro then becomes a Black man and births an African-American. Yesterday is the ascension of Christ, the awakening of Buddha and the Dali Lama's exile.

Yesterday teaches me who I am by showing me where I have been and who I have been and why. Yesterday unlocks the door to tomorrow. Yesterday enriches the present to inform the future.