Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired 

           She meant
                      No more turned cheek
                      No more patience for the obstruction
                      of black woman’s right to vote
                      & plant & feed her family

           She meant
                      Equality will cost you your luxurious life
                      If a Black woman can’t vote
                      If a brown baby can’t be fed
                      If we all don’t have the same opportunity America promised

           She meant
                      Ain’t no mountain boulder enough
                      to wan off a determined woman

           She meant
                      Here
           Look at my hands
                      Each palm holds a history
                      of the 16 shots that chased me
                      harm free from a plantation shack

           Look at my eyes
                      Both these are windows
                      these little lights of mine

           She meant
                      Nothing but death can stop me
                      from marching out a jail cell still a free woman

           She meant
                      Nothing but death can stop me from running for Congress

           She meant
                      No black jack beating will stop my feet from working
                      & my heart from swelling
                      & my mouth from praying

           She meant
                      America! you will learn freedom feels like
                      butter beans, potatoes & cotton seeds
                      picked by my sturdy hands

           She meant

           Look
           Victoria Gray, Anna Divine & Me
           In our rightful seats on the house floor

           She meant  
                      Until my children
                      & my children’s children
                      & they babies too
                      can March & vote
                      & get back in interest
                      what was planted
                      in this blessed land

           She meant
                      I ain’t stopping America
                      I ain’t stopping America

Not even death can take away from my woman’s hands
what I’ve rightfully earned