By: Alethea Jimison

Little Bird Get Inside Your Cage

Children are meant to be seen- not heard.  The adults tell us that they value our voices and yet shut us down when we speak without compliance. 

I am a separate human being- another entity and yet they smile gently as they repress me. 

Little bird, get inside your cage, I nip at gentle firm fingers in impotent rage. 

Yes, I am full of simmering glares of distrust for you authority. Your influence has no basis of truth for me- you are living in the matrix of lies plugged into an insidious reality.

I go home to tell mom that smoking causes cancer and she glares at my fear as I imagine a world without her. 

I ask her, “can we recycle to save the planet?” She shrugs carelessly, “I ain’t got time for all that.” 

Children still believe in saving the world and we hear these songs that tell us we are the world, and yet our voices are smothered by tittering adults who slap us for our opinions that lack compliance to ideologies of suicidal tendencies and tell us that we are full of defiance.

When we express our rage at being smothered and repressed, we are told we are sick.  The shadow people come with pills and tell us to take one every day until our voice dies away.  Get inside your cage little bird they say.   

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Victim of Mass Marketing

Today was the day that I realized that I did not throw in the towel. I had to eliminate the shame from my perspective and recalibrate my self-worth.

Today I tagged my higher self in to remind me how to put myself first.

You see, I have become so indoctrinated by a mass suicidal marketing campaign aimed at women to bring us to our knees and fill us with shame.

Today I held a wine glass in trembling hands as I made my first phone call to meet with a group of women to discuss my cry for help in my battle with sobriety.

I masked my addiction with an elegant wine glass that made my weakness acceptable to society.

I asked for help even as I drank from the glass of my own poisoning. Trying to drown out the falsely soothing voice in my head excusing my conditioning.

I spent the last five years of my life telling myself that it was okay to have a glass of wine every night. I also spent the last five years of my life drinking the whole bottle and losing that fight.

You see, it’s easy to lie about not being an addict when you manage to be functional in a way that hides your panic.

Addiction is a disease caused by living in a constant state of anxiety. I spend too much time asking myself, “am I good enough?” while choking on the bile of my self-doubt.

“You look so elegant with your wine,” they said and I fell for the illusion and every time.

I felt sexy, confident, and now I feel like a fool of clever marketing. Every time I turn on the TV; I see alcohol displayed on an altar made for worshipping.

Today I breathe a sigh of relief as I tag in my higher self. Today I breathe a sigh of relief as I accept that it is all right to ask for help.

Today is the day that I remind myself of my own self-worth. Yes, I accept that I am working on my sobriety. But I forgive myself for being vulnerable to mass marketing.

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Silence

Silence surrounds me as everyone sleeps. Like the raindrops sliding down my window- they creep.  Thoughts that won’t fade with my exhaustion letting me find peace. On the constant verge of tears that will not fall. Rage is my only surcease.

My eyes water and I cannot breathe. So afraid to acknowledge the things that scare me.  The night is a ghost that haunts me, releasing the demons in my mind. 

Daylight eludes me like the fairytales we dream. The sunshine shatters into my eyes blinding me momentarily as I drag myself out of bed too tired to care about anything. Only wanting to be alone not obligated to anybody.  One minute that’s mine selfishly. 

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The Hammer of Racism

The hammer of life beats rapidly and fiercely piercing the mind with a savage penetration; creating festering wounds and perpetuating spiritual violation. 

Racism is an insidious illusion that hides in the open within our modern society.  Whitewashing and brainwashing happen daily on our TV. 

Some people don’t even know that they are the problem.  Brown and golden skin pitted against pale and yellow skin.  We’ve been conditioned to deny our own humanity within.

            We are all the echo of a limitless ancestry.  Most of our history has been suppressed and beaten into the shadows as our color was smothered in mass genocides. 

The historical obliteration of millions of colors of the rainbow has been denied. 

The school books lie to our children and tell us that some pale-face discovered America with impunity. Our government institutions close every year to honor his raping and destruction of a whole racial identity. 

            We have the power to create unity with unconditional love and denial of a specific racial identity. 

I am unspecified- I am the light. I come from a long line of Africans and Shamans of Turtle Island before They stole our history and renamed my home America. 

I am human…Hue-man… I am the light I see within you.  I am no longer the child who was never good enough because of a label that was never true. 

I release myself from the pain caused by the racism within my own roots.  Rejected by the unloving and unloved in their own bitter inner disputes.

Ignorance was the factory that produced the labor of judgment on a conveyor belt of automated conditioning.  We grew up to be beautiful against all mockery because all colors of the rainbow are Godly.

Today I am free but I remember the journey of the little mulatto who believed she was nobody.