Caribbean black living in white suburbia

Caribbean black living in white suburbia

Caribbean black isolated

in

Living isolated 

in 

In white suburbia,


My white neighbor smiles
But not with her eyes

Hides so as not to speak;

 I accept
Why?

To be accepted,
To be liked
To be respected

To be liked?


Yet I am rejected,


Sincere smiles, conversations,


Emotive hand-waves saved for

Those who look


Like her

she is safe
Looking further a field


In white suburbia,


My neighborhood much of


The same

White on white smiling genuine


Together


While rosy cheeked babies


In dew-filled suburban sunlight walk by

But me —

 I am
Alone
With my black child

On the periphery
Of some silent club, clan


Cult, alienated, clothed in my blackness


In white suburbia


Looking for a better life, a brighter
Future for my family,


Growing cynical feeling weary,


Tired, depressed, repressed


Don’t want to explain


My dreadlocks,

My thick lips, multi-colored hair
 barrettes, afro-centric apparel,


Cobalt blue Volkswagen Passat


Just don’t
Want to explain

I understand you , try to
Understand me

Holding my pain


Told to ignore


Internalized age-old beliefs, 

as I cause


People to downcast their eyes


As I walk by, people who clutch handbags when in


Black male presence

Told to ignore ‘It’ when I see
‘It’ when I feel
‘It’

My African-American


Brothers 

---and Sisters


Accustomed to,


Desensitized from

They already know
‘It’


Will never change

White friends sympathize


Try to empathize


Try to see my side


But unless they 

Feel ‘it’


They can not know


A Caribbean Black


Living isolated in 

In white 

White suburbia

My white neighbor smiles


But not


Not with

With her eyes

Taken from unpublished work titled "Muse Melodies"