You’re ready, then. Now, remember what your grandma told ya: 'No one is born with courage, but we are all born with potential.’ You’re gonna get that job, and on the way you’re gonna look em’ all right in their hateful eyes and say, “Hey, you; you see me? You like what you see, huh? You like the sassiness of my walk, the haughtiness of my laugh. You’ve seen me moving on the dance floor, yeah? I saw that look in your eyes. I can move and I can be any-damn-thing I want to be, and you don’t like it, do you? Little Miss Prissy.”

Yeah, that’s what I’ll say to the working men with their crude remarks, and the fancy ladies, shopping for hats. They’re all gonna see me rise.

Time was, I’d have walked with my head slung low, my back curved over, my timid face pointed at my bare’n’bleedin feet. Those stories of the whippings and the hangings, of the raping and beatings; they all put the fear of God into to us, kids. There were no sassy black ladies, shoulders back, taking on the world, then.

I grew to feel that I’d never have nothing, never be nothing, never see nothing. Even so, I’m rising above all that, now. They don’t like it. They don’t want it. They want me scared; they want me locked away within my colour, for eternity.

History books at schools, they never tell the story like it was. I’m gonna keep the truth out there. It’s the only way to keep my folks, and their folks and their folks, alive. The only way to free their dreams and hopes is through me. And others like me. And every day, there are more like me.

Throughout my life, I’ve been looked at like I’m two feet tall, now I stride like I’m twenty feet or more. Ladies fear their husbands wanna pluck diamonds at the meeting of my thighs. Men fear the self respect I ooze in every movement of my curves. The funny thing is, I ain’t got diamonds, but I dance like I do, and the freedom I seize makes me the richest one in any room, on any street. Hell, I walk like I got oil wells pumping in my living room.

They will make cruel remarks, sure. I ain’t stupid, and I ain’t never gonna lose my memories, let alone my pride. It ain’t us who enslaved innocent people; I feel no shame. No way, no how! But as they trip me up, shoot me with their eyes, and target me with hate; I’ll rise like the moon, the sun, and the tides. I’ll breathe the air, and kick up the dust, just as they do. I got rights, just like they do.

Lord, through ingrained fear, casting off nights of terror – I will rise. Through their shame, I rise. Beating on their prejudice, I’ll face my future head-on. I'll stroll into a dawn that’s clear, bearing the dreams and hopes of every slave. Through it all, for us and for them, for freedom and for peace – I’ll rise.

Now, where was I? Purse: Check. Keys: Check. Okay – let’s go get me that job!


I am the sickness, which allows each lie I tell of inaccessible futures, to deceive you; I am the oracle of lies itself. I will ensnare you with deceptions of such beauty; you would have to be dead to deny me. And yet, in time you will wish to be dead, to escape my grip.

I am, in fact, the enemy of everyone, and the most dangerous enemy of all. No one will agree with this you see, because everyone secretly or evidently wants what I offer.

The biggest secret around is that I am not fit for purpose.

I do not bring everlasting happiness. I do not bless lives with euphoria in abundance. I merely give you a taste of it, I tease and then, when it will hit the hardest, I withdraw; often without reason.

False love is cruelty incarnate.

Sometimes, even after a lifetime of my presence, I will leave and touch others, elsewhere. I especially like to tease those who believe they possess me, because they are the biggest fools; blind to my cunning, my betrayal.

I seek to teach the truth of me, of my ways, but by the time the lessons are learned, my students are old, alone and damned to solitude; fearing a repetition of such sorrows. By then they are consigned to emptiness. And I have won...again and always.

So see here, I give my lesson early to you lucky readers; a one-time deal. You young, careless and clueless boys and girls – listen up. I am schooled in treachery; I am a temple devoid of worship; the mother of all longing. I will thwart all sources of refuge; I will lead you and leave you to beg for release from a maze of grief, without end. I will fool you with temptations as yet without match in either taste or sound; and then when all is good and smiles enrich your daily rituals of love, I will vanish and leave only wreckage, for my own, torturous amusement.

I am not poetry, not happiness, not about truth or eternity; I am death in disguise - Hell dressed as Heaven. I am the darkness in the light, an abyss within the joy! A false love.

Blood and life are merely transitory; souls are easily gained when love rears its pretty head. So, if you should come to know me, do not be the fool; dare to bid me a sweet farewell. And deny yourself the sweetest taste of pain you would ever know.