Lament of a Colored Girl
© 2004 Renee Matthews-Jackson

Colored girls

always sing songs that,
"stop in the name of love".
Songs that say,

"I'm sorry, so sorry".
Happy mixed with sad, dew,
and rain on sunny days...

Colored girls

wear ribbons, and bows,
and rags wrapped 'round they heads,
to cover the headaches

that happen after hangovers,
and let downs,

and spirits of hope that are faded.

Colored girls

mourn the loss of they men,
in wars--on foreign soils,

and at home--
of morgue trips to identify sons
that have been slain on inner-city streets...
Hauling coffins to graves,

while makin' more babies,
that become men.
For all this sorrow,

they start over again.

Colored girls

become women of strength,
while standing dazed, 

peering through steel bars
at the men they love so dearly,
and it is clear to

Colored girls
that their men are separate from them
by systematic clanging

in jail house dwellings.
So they weep before they sleep,
or take no time

for sleep at all...

Colored girls

with swollen bellies,
and swollen feet,

and swollen hands,
and blackened eyes,

and low self-esteem,
and no self-respect...

come out of the struggle,
stronger,

bursting with the highs,

and lows of life...

To live,

in spite of trauma,

and misfortune,

to live

in spite of lost love,

to live

in spite of the stuff

that was stolen

from their giving spirits,

to live

in spite of injustice,

and immeasurable pain...

Colored girls

still dance,

and sing,

and laugh,

and give praise...

For without the valley's,

and the peaks,

life would be a multitude
of distant nothingness,

and they would exist no more...