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The manhood black men inherit in a white supremacist system is an obdurate brass idol placed on the lowest landing of a capitalist staircase well within earshot still just beyond his reach. Everywhere we go we hearken for the telltale notes it sings as the matter that would be our dreams collect like dust on its bellwether post. The tragedy–to aspire to a manhood–that is lodged outside us. A high dead god we shine with our ambition, our insecurities, our ego and our prayers. This hard thankless thing we are taught to protect against all odds because it’s height alone bemoans how fragile and tremulous it must rest inside its pious hardness.
Brothers, true manhood is an organic thing. Its strength derives from how it nurtures our softness. How it recasts a craning neck toward the majesty of your own breastplate. It is a breathing thing that emanates from within. See how the breath protects itself by breathing. We needn’t protect it as if it is an ash-filled defenseless thing on a pedestal under siege by the wind. Its treasure preempts capital of any kind and its petulant grotesque and inorganic accumulations.
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Brad Walrond, poet writer, scholar, activist born in Brooklyn, NY based in the Bronx. Brad Walrond’s forthcoming collection “everywhere alien” is soon to be published by renowned writer-activist and publisher Jessica Care Moore on Moore Black Press. You can follow Brad on Facebook, Instagram, and twitter @bradwalrond
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Photo Credit: Author
