Knots

I am asked how it feels to be a diverse artist.
I say that to my knowledge, without chasing ghosts, I am fully black.
Without plantation Polaroids, I am only black.
I say that were I more a melange perhaps one could call me diverse.
But Tiger Woods I am not.
Once upon a time I might have called myself this thing.
A time not all that long ago.
When I sipped the Kool-Aid, ate the Pablum.
Before I learned to spit both out.
Before my courtship with words and their meanings was hijacked.
Usurped by patronizing platitudes seeking shortcuts.
Holding hollow the need to pacify and placate.
He says "We are many things."
I say "No one sees the plantation in you."

I am an artist of colour, I say.
A storyteller of sun-baked hue.
He says we are many things.

So what if I cry out, I say, cry out a stream of colour.
Black skin white heat red blood the blues.
Diverse makes me cringe now.  It defeats its purpose.
Used to speak of bringing in, it succeeds only in pointing out.
The standard bearer not, the norm not, the given not.
The diverse are always the nots.  In knots.
Diverse is not the others.  It is the sum of all things.
The difference, the product, the divided and the remainder.
Red, brown, yellow, white, black.
I say we are many things.
But no one asks white folk how it feels to be diverse.
They are the express route, the destination, the default.
I am the construction zone, the missed exit, the detour.
Deftly down these slippery roads, the me among the us.
The I among the we.

We, the 'diverse'.

TT