Sunday, February 10, 2008

In the Night, a poem by Cubby Golden

In the night, I watch TV to fall asleep, or I just watch it to just kill time. Never knowing what to watch but some how what I feel the TV directs me to what it wants me to see. The movie Cleopatra was on, you know the one with Elizabeth Taylor. Sitting there wondering what happen to black people? Where did I come from? Last time I checked Africa, right? As I lay there watching this movie trying to count how many of me did, I see…an hour went by…still zero.



Darkness feel over my eyes with questions that where a dream of mines. Why is it that there were no blacks in Cleopatra? It is a movie about Egypt that is in Africa right. Man hollywerid can really make you question who you are at times. Is it telling me that everyone wants to be white or that I never existed until I was kidnapped from a different galaxy? Finding my self-asking my self questions that my mother over heard with my dark voice of concerns. Mother why does everyone want us to be white? With a blank stare hearing this from an 11 year old on the route to school. I do not know cubby, she said. I know my mother did not want to give me the answer; it was not her part to drop da black power ball on me before going to an all white school. Now I know what it feels like…remembering my moms telling me when Roots came on TV and the joy to see the story of her with her face on the television.

Knowing the true story of why she was here anyways was not god nor her chooses but someone who decided to kidnap her is the reason she was here. Pissed with anger and hate, white kids became well the target as much as she was. Years later with family we had this talk about color in the media which is a normal talk that leads into someone saying something stupid to have there black card removed. Cleopatra comes on as we are talking and a flash black and hate comes out, man this some fuck up shit seeing white people playing what is us. The room is silent and with a voice of confuses sin I once felt saying, “She was white.” My cousin with a straight face who went to Berkeley High, which is a liberal school. Having time freeze and seeing myself through her eyes and having myself say fucking Cleopatra.

Watching a movie called Chasing Amy which by a cool dude named Kevin Smith who seems to put real funny jokes about star wars which is one of those movies you are into or your not. They are a part where a militant black comic writer talks about the lack of black people in star wars. What’s a NUBIAN?


Those movies are about how the white man keeps the brother man down, even in a galaxy far, far away. Check this shit: You got cracker farm boy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy, blond hair, blue eyes. And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy, Nubian god! Vader, he’s a spiritual brother, y’know, down with the force and all that good shit. Then this cracker, Skywalker, gets his hands on a light saber and the boy decides he’s gonna run the fuckin’ universe; gets a whole CLAN of whites together. And they go and bust up Vader’s hood, the Death Star. Now what the fuck do you call that? Intergalactic civil war? Gentrification! They gon’ drive out the black element to make the galaxy ‘safe’ for white folks. And Jedi’s the most insulting installment! Because Vader’s beautiful black visage is sullied when he pulls off his mask to reveal a feeble, crusty, old white man! They tryin’ to tell us that deep inside we all wants to be white!
Well... isn’t that true?

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