photo by Alex Lear

There’s no big accomplishment in acting white

(after being subjected to some third stream muzak)

1.

if a chamber orchestra / complete

 w/tympani as percussion

plays a pentatonic scale

includes six and one half bars 

of flute improvisation

& the tune was composed

by an intelligent moor

does that make it

black

 music?

2.

does a dollop of musical melanin

make orchestral scores

something blood might

want to dance to

or squeeze lover flesh to

or fit to express 

what we been through?

is acting 

white

really more profound 

than afrikan aesthetics?

more tragic more magic 

more real more desirous

than soulful us jumping straight up

and being down, head thrown back

wailing into the blue, slightly off their key

but in our tune, blowing bodaciously 

like there was no tomorrow

must we really 

dot all our eyes

with fields of blue,

cross all our tee’s with the deafening silence

of liberal-arts-degreed negroes demonstrating 

they have arrived by sitting quiet 

legs crossed and morosely 

concentrating on deciphering 

well modulated arias

which resist the tapping foot, still 

the bobbing head and 

reject the shaking of any entraced 

body movements other than polite 

and discreetly tepid applause 

to indicate we’re in the pocket?

must we make ourselves

into something our enemies love 

to listen to

in order for us and our art 

to be considered human?

3.

if you want to play compose and be respected

as a classical musician why not just do that

and not insist that there is anything culturally black

about such a quest except perhaps our skin

and a few references to your lynched

history thrown in

why not just openly embrace what they do

and be what you’ve been trained to do

there is nothing prohibiting you

or me or any of we

from acting white

except maybe our individual angst 

constantly trying to justify

that there be something real

black about passing

over into the age-old truth 

of negro life and history,

abjectly supplicating to white supremacy

with a sambo-colored shibboleth

on our lips: boss, i may not be quite your color,

but i’ve disciplined my black ass to be your kind

4.

acting like our bodies are not us

is one of the most frequent ways

educated blacks manifest

they are cultured

the denial of blackness

is petite bourgeois power

insisting 

there is nothing wrong

with disappearing

into the tinkling 

quiet

of a well composed 

ode 

to otherness

—kalamu ya salaam