Text Poetry from the Road

While spending a few days in Mart recently working on the Mart Community Project, I met with one if the local "pioneer family" matriarchs who has been resistant to the Mart Community Project. Like me, she married into her Mart family. Unlike me, her husband's family is prosperous,prominent, and control quite a bit of land holdings in the area and beyond. She was (and remains) irritated by the fact that our project was funded over her pet project. I went to visit her in the spirit of community building, and to be honest, to appease some of our older, white supporters who view her as a potential asset or threat.

On the surface the meeting went well enough - she basically interrogated me with questions about the project, including how much we are paying artists, how many people are involved, and are we working with a "select" group of people - code for black people. I responded with the same transparency evident at our meetings where a budget is available for everyone to review. I was polite, suppressed my authentic self in the "best interests" of the project, and when the moment came to leave I exhaled. There was personal chit chat about our lives and children. We are a well traveled, well educated, family. Her usual superiority in Mart does not inspire awe; however, her reference to certain members of my extended family made me want to scream. I know better. I know my niece in law's mother was not her "good friend who helped her raise her children" - she was her maid. I sat here and listened though, did not challenge her construction of reality, nor did I expressed sarcasm or outrage when she said she did not care about the UT class of students coming to Mart in fall and spring semester to work on service projects. Of course not, her agenda was driven by her pet project not receiving funding because in her mind, ours had displaced her her unchallenged allocation year after year.

During this same work visit I encountered a class/race battle with a member of my team. She is from a nearby town, very talented and bright,and has endured her own battle coming from an established white family as an artist who has walked a different path. However, the collision of class and race in Mart provoked a confrontation between us on the goals of the project, what community building is, and how best to achieve "outcomes". I felt beat up - accused of being anti white, extreme, socialist, and having a chaotic work style. I was overwhelmed and for the first time in two years I wondered why I pursued this crazy project to begin with in the class entrenched, racially polarized south. I began to doubt myself and the potential of the project. Being the over responsible person that I am, and leader of the project with many folks depending on my enthusiasm, vision, and energy, I sucked it up and do what I always do - kept moving with my pain and doubt in tow.

Being in the throws of action phase, time for process and reflection is hard to come by. Still, I was experiencing trauma. I found myself sobbing and unable to sleep at night. I put on my game face, trying to reconcile all the opposing forces, endure the not so subtle racial statements and the frustration I was feeling towards both sides of the color line for different reasons. The pressure was building and I could not contain it. I missed my house in Austin and my two Golden Retrievers who offer a less complicated companionship. Knight and Schwarzman (2006) caution against too much energy in the Action phase and finished product and not enough on the process of learning and social change. I was suffering from this very misstep, and a neglect of the auto-ethnographic process.

I was compelled to consider the consequence of community building, activist scholarship, and working in a place where the authentic self is sometimes shrouded. I felt as if I had betrayed my biracial children, my family, members of the community who had been given short shrift for generations. And for what? Was this really the way to go? And at what price for everyone involved, including me? I found myself sobbing in the parking lot at Walmart. When my niece called me, she heard the quiver in my voice and rushed over to comfort me, assuring me I had betrayed no one. The outrage and hurt I was feeling was nothing new to her, or the rest of my family, including my kids who grew up dealing with racism everyday in the progressive SF Bay Area. Keep doing what you are doing she insisted - it matters and will reap us all benefits.

I was urged by my colleague in the project and friend, an oral historian at Baylor, to record everything. He put his arm around me and told me I never have to meet with that woman again, or answer her questions. The tears streamed down my face, finally feeling I could reveal my true self and lean into someone without risking the project. Although I knew I had to begin my own account, I had little concentration for writing while spending my days like a whirling dervish between tasks. I also knew if I started writing on the computer it would get bogged down with intellectual masking tape and forsake the gut wrenching rawness of my feelings. One early morning when sleep was elusive, I began a series of what I will call "text poetry", texting in my bed and then moving outside to the porch when the sun began to rise. The following is the content of those free fall, unfiltered poems.

TEXT POEM #1
pulled in a million pieces
no mater what i do
someone always mad
can't sleep
or rest
holding up
carrying
canter is everywhere
but in my center space
power-privilege-race
personal-eternal-pain
dodging my authentic self
feeling hung up and out
with no where for me
to lean into reprieve
you are as they say _________

all kinds of nothing from
all kinds of nothing
inside me i am one big
question mark
covering my real face
my real hurt
my so called anger
my emptied out heart
unrecorded in real time
thrown but not caught
and where the hell are you?
oh right
i forgot
again

TEXT POEM #2
people see me but don't
know where i am
in the abyss of
converging realities
compressed
conflicted
to decide if there
is a direction to run in
the old white lady and
her
authority-superiority-and how dare you-come here
and think-well anything really
i held my hand and my voice from
smacking her with the
truth
and felt i had betrayed a list of people because of it
my kids
my family
my real folks
myself
that took a lot from me
for the project?
what project?
what ever shrinking soul?
i would rather be
swallowed by the ground
than swallow my own voice
with the faces of those i love retreating
into the background of
her one dimensional reality
and soul robbing air I couldn't breath in
much less feel myself
auto-ethnography my ass
this is war

TEXT POEM #3
you won't read this
rendering my words
null and void
so why not yell at the top of my lungs?
i give up
and out
of here
the rage of it all
stepped over the color
line without my colors
true colors
that is a mosaic no one wants to see
too much red
all that blood - Blood (no pun intended)
now which history do you
mean to represent?
safe or sorry?
both and neither
we are repackaging our
souls
bending over backwards
trying not to break
but we have already broken
good thing you and no one
will read this

TEXT POEM #4
you wonder where i am
no where
and everywhere
crossing borders
retreating
this is my artistic body of
no work
we are breaking ground
and plates-tiles-oh yeah
and minds
community engagement
through art
visions
research
truth and lies
bad asses
aristocrats
crack heads
faith based with no faith
this is my artistic body of
no work
cause work equals truth
or dare
and right now i am
neither

TEXT POEM #5
i am on the stoop
on a street in black folks' town
white woman in pajamas
early before the heat
chokes me
alone but for the stray
dogs wandering around
looking for? not me
this is the street where
tommy lived
played up and down
before everything happened
that led him to
me
and rena
and jonathan
how do you wrap your arms around magic?
time and space?
i want to see him back
then
floating free and happy in
his childhood
on a street of carefully
tended homes
and gardens
occupied by caring people
not this collection of
dilapidated and defeated
and abandoned and overgrown
why can't i see hm
instead of this?
i sure don't have a problem seeing
past/present racial divide
boy stay in your place-
this nice place we made
for you to keep you away
from us place
oh but look, there is a
red robin fluttering
about

References:
Knight, K., Schwarzman, M., & Others (2006). Beginner’s guide to community-based arts. New Village Press: Oakland, CA.