Sunday, October 08, 2006

Poem



Friday, after the conference, I made plans to meet Ryan at the comic store in Pike Place (Golden Age), for a date thingie... which we love to do since we don't get out of the house much (for various reasons). Anyway, since I got about two hours of sleep, I was dead on my feet. Anyway, standing outside of Left Bank Books, I looked through the books they had for sale for which the proceeds go towards books for prisoners. I spied a booked entitled, Reconstructing Gender: A Multicultural Anthology. It's a textbook from 2003 (which only means it's fairly relevant... and no, I don't know when I started thinking in terms of things being culturally relevant, but when I was at the conference, my comments were all over relevancy).

The clincher was a poem by the late, great Pat Parker. I brought it in joy of sharing this poem with you... I even made the left-leaning white altie chick behind the counter read it... not considering her reaction first (which is not how I work generally... I had a moment of *gulp*, then I was like, "fuck it" -- not my issue).

***

For the White Person Who Wants to Know How to Be My Friend

The first thing you do is to forget that i'm black.
Second, you must never forget that i'm black.
You should be able to dig Aretha,
but don't play her every time i come over.
And if you decide to play Beethoven -- don't tell me
his life story. They make us take music appreciation too.
Eat soul food if you like it, but don't expect me
to locate your restaurants
or cook it for you.
And if some Black person insults you,
mugs you, rapes your sister, rapes you,
rips your house or is just being an ass --
please, do not apologize to me
for wanting to do them bodily harm.
It makes me wonder if you're foolish.
And even if you really believe Blacks are better lovers than
Whites -- don't tell me. I start thinking of charging stud fees.
In other words -- if you really want to be my friend -- don't
make a labor of it. I'm lazy. Remember.

-- Pat Parker

1 Comments:

At 2:23 PM PST, Blogger K said...

I soooo love this poem.

Smooches!

 

Post a Comment

<< Home