We’re heading for The Beyond,
they howl.

Neon spotted sweaters
and symbolic dances,
shower the audience with vivid animation.
“Urban Bush Women” they say “that’s who we are.”

White bird.
Dancing to symbolize the dove.
A creature full of love and peace of the deepest kind.
Soothes and quiets our worried and troubled thoughts,
enabling us to find renewal in the silence of the mind

Rinse, wash and repeat.
Rinse, wash, and repeat.
They say to themselves over and over again.
In attempts to show the words
written on the faces of slaves of our past lives.

Carried down from generations,
only to have those same words written on
the 21st century black citizens of our society.

Muscles bulge from carrying.
fingers shread  from climbing,
brows sweat with the wet of survival.

Pushing themselves
they flee through valleys;
cradles of adversity,
hollows where hate waits.

The surface of their race is shown
through strong words
and quick movements.

The beyond, the beyond, the beyond
they whisper to each other.
Growing bigger by the second.

Coating the room with intense stares.
Waiting for what’s next.

They forge rivers of resistance
through a world of white;
combs planted in the nappy hair

that defines both their beauty
and their pain.