Black Love

angel flores jr

A scream ripped through the silence
In a little village
Illuminated by a full moon.
He sat outside
Of the hut
He built with his own hands
As she gave birth
To their first child.
His back, straight,
His skin, black
As the sky above him,
His love for her
Growing as her screams
Broke the silence.

A hundred and fifty years later,
He lay in the belly of a grand vessel.
Beside him she lay.
He had met her two suns ago,
Or what he thought was two suns ago.
And yet, she was as familiar as
The sun rising over the forest,
His mothers hand on his brow.
Something he couldn't describe
Brought them together,
But will it keep them together.

A hundred years later,
Once again he sat outside his home.
Around him slept children,
Some dark,
Some the colour of sand,
All he claimed as his own.
A husky grunt escaped the shack,
Massa Johnson had come a-visiting.
Tonight, Massa claimed her body,
But he owned something more valuable,
He owned her heart.

A hundred years had passed,
And still he toiled in the fields.
He was a free man,
But he still needed to provide for his family,
So he slaved in the fields,
But don't you dare call him a slave.
At the end of the day,
He made his way home
To her home cooking,
To their children,
To her open arms.

As he say in the amphitheater
With a white man on his left
And she sat on is right,
He watched as his son
Accepted the piece of paper
From a tall black man.
She slipped her hand into his
And he squeezed it,
Refusing to let the tears
Fall from his eyes.
They did good,
They did damn good by that boy.

You see,
Hundreds of years have passed,
Things change for the good
And for the bad,
But one thing remained an anchor
For a people
Who have gone through so much.
One thing was the glue
That kept them together,
Even though everything tried to pull them apart.

Love,
Black love has survived
The test of time,
The test of pain,
The test of hatred.
Let us not let it disappear
Under the myths of infidelity,
Under the lack of self love,
Under the superficial things
We use as excuses.

Let black love reign,
Let love reign.