Freedom Rider, a poem by Jada Griffin. Art by Karen's Art Imagination

Freedom Rider
By Jada Griffin

I am from Africa,
but you cannot see the dark in my skin.
I am neither black nor white,
but both, and everything in-between.
Does a blank square on Facebook
drown out my voice and give you space to scream?

See the people setting fire to buildings,
igniting the greedy walls of power.
This White policeman knees the Black man.
This Black man beats the Wife.
This White man hits the Child.
Not broken, but a system made by design to keep the masses down.
Could all isms perish
if we burned their egos to the ground?

What if fear could never override our best instincts,
if poetry was survival itself?
When is this moment the here that we have?
When is the opening that you say you need, not mine to give,
but ours to claim?
When is the time for revolution?
Because revolt and revolution are not the same.

Could we get off this doomsday voyage to extinction?
When the slave-trader is toppled.
When the empire-builder falls.
When the dreamer is an empiricist radicalizing over time.
When the ground beneath our feet is shaking.
When the idea that cultural interpenetration is not co-option, but creative exchange.
Will this be our collective moment to awaken?

Could I/You, She/He be neither named, colored, nor gendered,
stripped of tropes and categories,
a phenomenon as visceral as blood, skeleton, organs and flesh?
Could we together grow into ourselves and into each other,
one who knows that Love is neither black nor white,
but both, and everything in-between?
Love is a Freedom Rider.
Love is liberty that gives every person equal room to breathe.

The reader of a poem is a participant in the poem. You will interpret Freedom Rider according to your uniqueness. Its narrator is neither named, colored, nor gendered, but a perhaps mysterious and undiscovered marvel. Diversity enriches our world. Race will never not exist, thankfully, and being anti-racist has never meant not seeing race. Undoubtedly, I have systems to unlearn, as we all do. This poem is a different conversation. Conceivably, it leans toward a post-racist society - you will be the judge. Observe that legendary intellectual and activist, Angela Davis, grouping two great injustices together in one sentence, says that it is vital to recognize that the current occupant of the White House, “represents a sector of the population in this country that wants to return to the past…with all of its white supremacy, with all of its misogyny.”

Jada Griffin is a painter and a dancer, a published writer and poet. Read her tribute essay to Thomas Paul Augustine, The Man Who Named The Pearl in PORTLAND INTERVIEW magazine.

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Freedom Rider by Karen’s Art Imagination, 11 x 14” brush, pen, and ink on paper.