Ramshackle Castles in the Sky

The following poem is dedicated to the memories of Bessie Smith, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, and Billie Holiday. I’ve been reading Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Davis and it has been an educational experience in which I’m learning a lot, and also realizing that nothing ever changes. It’s amazing how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“The birth of the blues was aesthetic evidence of new psychosocial realities within the black population,” as Davis states in the book. She also discusses the pushback from those in the black community who perceived the blues lyrics as being a sort of vilification of the black male, when all they were doing was singing about the experiences that women were having in the years following their release from slavery, when black people were finally free to choose their mates. The new freedom brought with it new attitudes, expectations, relationship dynamics, and sexual freedom for both black women and black men. Still, one of the prevailing attitudes back then, one that is still persistent today, was that “race must always take precedence, that race is implicitly gendered as male.” In other words, don’t speak ill of the black male. Hmph. I call bullshit. The blues, whether expressed in song, poem, story, or play, is a way for the artist to transform pain into something beautiful.

For those beautiful Queens of the Blues:

I���m tired of breaking my own heart

I���m ready to move on, knowing that

I never meant more to you than I

once meant to myself and that ain���t sayin��� much.

They say if you don���t love yourself,

you���ll meet someone else who doesn���t love you

either, someone who���ll help you

not love yourself. And that���s what you

did for me; you helped me not love me.

You made promises you knew you���d never

keep, kept promising to love me,

to one day love me like I love you, but reality has

been staring me in the face for some time now

asking if you don���t love me today, why

would you love me tomorrow?

I���ve fallen down the ladder so many times,

trying to reach those castles in the sky you

built for me, but they���ve always been out of reach

for me; the door to the castle is locked and you

threw away the key cuz you never planned to let

me in. It���s just a good thing that while you were building

castles up too far away for me to reach,

I was building my own castles.

And I���m going home now, to a palace that

was built specially for me by someone who truly

loves me and doesn���t need to play with my mentality

to prove that love is a fragile mistress that can never

be satisfied as long as there are only promises with

no manifestations in reality. This is a door that was

left open for me and I don���t even need a key.

I just have to want to enter. I started making that journey

way back when I realized you were a jester of love, someone

who plays with love to suit your childish needs. And now

I can walk away, hand in hand, with me

and never bother to look back,

trying to find a castle in the sky

that never really existed in the first place.

So whatever the Hell you built up there for me,

just place a sign out front: For Sale, She didn���t believe me,

but maybe you will. And that���s the way it���ll end, for me

anyway.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind