by Tyson Amir
“Under a Different Light” is me delving into the context of different life chances for an individual. I was inspired by the sci-fi black afro-futuristic writings of Octavia Butler and thought that a semi sci-fi poem would be an interesting lens for discussing divergent life possibilities for a black body. I've used the motif of meeting an alternate version of myself before in a piece but never on a scale like this. “Under a Different Light” is a very real piece for me because I know in my heart and soul that I am no different from any black man or woman in America, especially those who end up falling victim to the streets, jails, or prisons.
The version of myself that I meet in the poem very well could've been me. I've been in a great number of situations because of the reality of black living that could've ended up in any one of those occurrences that I described happening to my other self in that piece. The line between Tyson one and Tyson two is virtually imperceptible. The poem ends with my other version deciding that taking his life is his best alternative. Research shows that prior to the 1960s, blacks never charted high on the scale of suicide, but after the turbulent times of the ’60s, suicide became a regular life event in the black community. Whites always charted higher in the category of suicide, but in the early 2000s black youth began to outpace their white counterparts in suicide deaths. Death visits us in many ways as a result of the conditions we are forced to live under.
Just recently I experienced two deaths that really broke me. I have been connected to so much death and loss that it is next to impossible to really quantify the level of hurt I've experienced. The grieving leads to immediately bottling up emotions and feelings because you have to face the world again in your black uniform. Both men were murdered; one was a near and dear friend, Basim Callens, and the other was a former student of mine, Mario Woods.
Basim was the victim of a carjacking in Atlanta, Georgia. Without attempting to sound clichéd, Basim was a really good dude. Like if I was a father I would've loved for him to have become my son-in-law. He was a good dude for the sake of being good. He had no ulterior motives; he was raised well and reflected the love and guidance he received in his daily life. His good deeds read like the good dude's All-Stars resume. Basim was all about his family and did all he could to take care of his mother and his younger siblings. The brother was a figure in the community, always promoting something positive. Basim was super educated; he learned Arabic and was fluent in it. Basim was about health and fitness, and was extremely humble, really working for the betterment of his people. From afar it would appear as if the life he lived was a formula for never falling victim to the traps of the streets. Yet and still, the poverty, systematic oppression, and limited opportunities of Black America led some young misguided kids to attempt to take something from him and in the process put multiple shots into my friend, terminating his life.
I'm from a spiritual path which has a tradition that says, "Whoever kills a soul it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely." As the saying states, any taking of a life is a tragedy similar to the slaying of all mankind. This is exactly what I felt in learning about the death of my brother Basim. To us, Basim was a nation of new possibility, and all it took was black poverty, bad decisions, desperation, fear, and a gun to completely kill off a nation. I learned about Basim's murder through social media, just like I learned about Mario's. At first I tried to deny it, hoping it was a terrible joke, that somebody was playing a ridiculous game or made some horrible mistake. But it was all true. Basim was dead, and so were the hopes of his family and of his people that he was filled with. If there was a way to survive the madness and transcend into something beautiful despite all the attempts to crush our dreams, then he was fashioned from that blueprint. His senseless murder was as if the hope for our new nation was completely wiped out. In that moment, I was once again violently reminded of my fragility and mortality. I just as easily could've been Basim, driving to work early one morning and not knowing I was driving towards my last breath.
The other death was a former student of mine, Mario Woods. His murder was captured in dramatic fashion and sent around multiple social media sites and evening news channels. He was murdered by the San Francisco Police Department in cold blood like so many other black men and women before him. SFPD claimed he made a threatening gesture, as if that justifies firing a volley of more than twenty shots at him. The autopsy report stated he was hit twenty-one times, and seventeen of those shots had a back to front trajectory, meaning he was shot in the back as he was moving away from officers. Mario who had recently received his high school diploma, fulfilling a promise he made with his mother, lay dead in the street. Going to jail is not a definitive statement of the character of a person. So many of our best and brightest have done time in jails and prisons or some might say, the concentration camps of North America. Having once been incarcerated in America is not proof of bad character. Mario had run into some "trouble" in his life, but he was making the necessary changes to honor his mother and himself. Sadly, SFPD does not take those steps toward change into consideration when they feel "threatened" by a man who makes no visible gesture of violence toward multiple armed law enforcement agents.
I attended Mario's wake and looked down into the face of the young boy I used to see smiling and full of life in my classroom. While I was looking at his body, I couldn't help but see myself in that same casket, in a similar suit with makeup applied to my face trying to make it appear as if I was still amongst the living. There is no way to protect yourself emotionally from everything you will feel when you're looking death right in the face. We will all die, but in America, Basim, Mario, and I live under the shadow of the sickle of death as it swings back and forth to reap the black seeds that have been sown in the soil of America.
I stated earlier in this section that I cannot count how many young black and brown men and women I've known who have been killed either by police or by the limited chances of street life. Traveling the country and seeing black life from the South, East, Midwest, and West Coast and doing work in jails and prisons in California has afforded me the opportunity to view my people from a variety of angles. What I see when I look in their eyes is me. It doesn't matter if they are wearing a suit and tie, jeans and a hoodie, county issue or California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation uniforms, we are all subjected to the same racist reality. Some may have received a few more advantages than others and accomplished more things, but America isn't interested in your resume. America's first preoccupation is your skin color and the false stereotypes attached to it. I am Basim and Mario and the brothers and sisters locked up behind bars. They are me under any type of light in America that shines bright enough to show the blackness of our skin. That is precisely the reason why none of us will truly be free until we strive together to manifest our freedom and liberation.
Dream Revisited (2001)
You want to know my dreams?
I sleep to the sounds of M-16s
Because mostly blacks and browns died on the front-lines of Viet-Nam.
Inhale aromas of
napalm
and carpet bombs
through my lungs
and exhale screams of Viet-Cong
in a language foreign to my native tongue.
Agent Orange burns
my chromosomes like
Gulf War syndrome
putting holes in my girl's ovaries
babies born deformed
my words form this ghetto poetry
and many nights I was torn from rest
like those police dogs who tore my flesh.
muscle from bone.
For freedom,
we marched determined
but Bull Connors and Mark Fuhrmans
turn on little innocent children
a powerful firehose.
Now my dreams consist of building named
Audubon
where bullets rip through my torso
&n
bsp; like El Hajj Malik El Shabazz,
Malcolm X.
With stretch marks on my neck,
lynched, hung.
Under a southern sun
they cut my penis off
because they into those phallic symbols
and I sweat profusely in my sleep
because even in my dreams
I have to stay on my toes
nimble like
Bo Jangles,
Bo Jackson
So now we
shuffle
shuck
jive
to stay alive in black cleats
as athletes
or in black face
with buck teeth
like buckwheat
you see these types be stereo
so they surround me like sound
y'all we victims of these terrible scenarios
and some of us lose faith
which is one of the signs of this crazy world
where we don't go to the mosque
or to the church no more
because that's where they blew up
4 little girls
and many nights I had to make the street my pillow
it's where I dream dreams of poverty and skin disease
because eczema
covers my epidermis
from shooting smack in HIV infected
hypodermic needles
convulsions in a fetal position
in the back of a dark alley
as the poison kills parts of my cerebral cortex
because we already dead to them more or less.
So in my dreams
my children play with death,
some smoke sess and
others drink liquid death and
pack weapons of death on their waistlines
capable of causing an instant flatline
them tech-9s and latest designs
of high powered weaponry
I think you can see
these dreams
ain't no friend of mine,
Because in most dreams I'm claustrophobic
chained in the belly of slave ships
with my brothers and sisters
or confined by walls,
cells
6X9
doing time
25 to life
because my third strike
was theft of a slice of pizza
Ay, yo, Judge
I was hoping you could see I'm just a hungry child on welfare
with these crazy dreams of being a fresh prince of Bel Air
now I'm the prince of a cell with mildew and stale air
where a white guard will come escort me to a court yard
where I get to see the sun
for only 1 hour a day
and then back to lock up.
But you see this brother named Nas
he told me with words like this
“I never sleep because sleep is the cousin of death.”
I'm trying to take that advice because this sleep ain't nothing nice,
because in my dream sleep
is where zombies of fiends speak,
and I walk with bodies riddled by bullets because of these mean streets.
Where the demon police
will leave you bleeding for speeding in a white Hyundai
and on the wrong day
if you dreaming in your car
and they wake you up with guns drawn
and you respond the wrong way,
it's bombs away,
bullet holes in driver side windows and doors
but the thing be
is these dreams are metaphors
reflections
of what I see in my 24-7.
The suffering
the oppression
the poverty
the depression
the hustling
without resting
these are my realities without question
and when I rest my head at night
you see my dreams
manifest them.
________________________________________________________________________
Reflections of a Black Boy:
I once saw a sign in the hands of a white supremacist which depicted Dr. King in cross hairs and the text read, "our dream came true."
Dr. King once criticized the Christian community of the United States for its racist and segregationist practices. In the 21st century segregation is technically illegal. Integration is the law of the land. In 21st century “integrated” America some of the most segregated places in America are found in American public schools Monday through Friday, every day of the year.
What does it mean to integrate when the system you're to integrate into is founded upon and still fueled by centuries of racial hatred and systemic discrimination for your kind?
Black people in integrated America are: the poorest of the poor, the most unemployed, the most negatively impacted by the medical system, the most incarcerated, the most likely to be killed by police or security personnel, the most housed in inadequate accommodations, the most pushed/kicked out of school, the most likely to die on a daily basis. All of this is sponsored by 21st century integrated America.
________________________________________________________________________
In my poem, “The Dream Revisited,” I take more of a macro approach to happenings in America since Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The civil rights, black rights, and black liberation/empowerment movements of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s marked an important time in Black America and in America overall. King envisioned a world where integration was a solution to many of the problems that black people had experienced as the outcasted other since 1619. Blacks have been constantly placed on the periphery of the American experience, even though America would not be possible without their labor and sacrifice since its inception. We are an organic part of this American social experiment. There is no America without the black contribution; the foundation of this society was thoroughly laid by black bodies.
If you want to examine it from a temporal lens, Jamestown was founded in 1607, and the first blacks were brought to Jamestown as indentured servants/slave in 1619. Twelve years into what would become the American experiment, black folks were here on this land being exploited for their labor to build up America.
Black people have literally put blood, sweat, and tears into establishing America for nearly 400 years, and, rightfully so, they want to reap some of the benefits that should be afforded to them on account of their work. When they begin to follow this natural inclination, they are punished, and what makes the sting worse is the fact that the very America we've built is one of the most resource wealthy societies on the planet. We have a front row seat to the milk and honey of the American dream, but we are forced to watch with faces pressed to glass as whites happily reap all the benefits.
The path to the civil rights movement was long and tumultuous. The fight since 1619 for the overwhelming majority of blacks in America has been for freedom and equality. This struggle culminated in a historic moment where parts of America began acknowledging the institutionally brutal treatment towards blacks. In 1954 the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Brown v, Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Supreme Court stated regarding public schools that, "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." This decision made segregation in public education unconstitutional, and by analogy it made segregation in all public accommodations unconstitutional. However, it took another Brown v. Board decision the following year to actually "encourage" states to end their segregationist practices "with all deliberate speed." But ultimately, the Supreme Court does not have any enforcement authority so any decision it renders will not carry the weight of the paper it is inscribed upon unless other parts of the government and greater American society enforce the decision. Still, these decisions empowered the civil rights movement, and the push for full inclu
sion and integration was on.
Some of our leadership at the time thought that our being an "organic" part of the American experience would result in us being allowed a place at the table under integration once the policies of "separate but equal" were overturned. This is one of those places where theory is much different from reality. We as a people had never encountered this place before because America had never fully embraced inclusion of blacks at any time in the history of this land. The closest parallel would be the brief years of reconstruction immediately following the Civil War, but that was quickly replaced by the first iteration of Jim Crow.
In an attempt to be fair and truly understand Dr. King and the civil rights movement, it's important to note that black people in the '50s and '60s had reached a watershed moment that had never been witnessed before in their existence in America. From 1619 to 1865, chattel slavery was legal in America and the majority of black people in America were under that system. From 1865 to 1955, legal segregation in many parts of the union was law of the land, as well as "slavery by another name" i.e., convict leasing, debt peonage, sharecropping, and tenant farming. Millions of black people languished under this free but not really free status conferred to them. In response to this, millions of blacks fled the South in search of new opportunities, but they inevitably found racism and institutional discrimination everywhere they went.
Blacks have always resisted the unfair treatment they've experienced in America. The mid-twentieth century provided blacks with a perfect storm for effecting change. What was it exactly that made the movements of the 1950s and ’60s different? This is my rough approximation of those reasons. The difference can be attributed to myriad factors; one is the existence of an educated black mass that had been strengthened by years of political, social, and cultural struggle from previous generations. The NAACP was formed in 1909 and had a major impact on race-related issues. This strengthened those who would take part in the civil rights movement. The 1920s saw the rise of Marcus Garvey's UNIA and Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple and many other groups focused on rights and empowerment of blacks in America. We saw the emergence of new leaders both male and female. Voices like W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Paul Robeson, to name a few. The early twentieth century also saw the birth of a flourishing black arts culture. The Harlem Renaissance began to deliver new messages to black men and women throughout America. Black people had black icons to look up to that provided symbols of power and racial pride. The early 1900s gave black folks heroes like Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and Jesse Owens. Each were the best in their respective fields for their moment in the sun. Imagine the feeling in the breasts of black folks who only decades before were just stepping off plantations and now were able to say a black man was the heavyweight champion or the fastest man in the world, able to legally beat all them white boys with ease.