Written piece
Morning, Brother
Gavin Johnson
Jamaica
About this piece
When you know your history, first you will be angry, but first you need to understand that the current time, the current day, the current morning is not good. A poem, a conversation between a silent audience of someone needing to hear why you are angry.
Morning, brother
But what's good about it?
Have you read or have you heard
As we speak with their word
From our mother?
Have you read her letters?
I'll do you one better. Have you seen her pictures?
No, because they control the mail and the features
Made it hard for her to reach us
They gave us noise and controlled the phone
So we don't recognise her voice or tone.
Morning brother
Nothing is good about it.
We have been separated by our fathers
And their last names.
So we wouldn't recognize each other
But share the same shames.
I've heard my brother
Speaking to our sister with the language they use
And I am confused.
I see them take her clothes and ask why she's cold
Take her bed and ask where she sleeps
Take what she didn't give and ask why she gave it away
And then they looked to us and told us to treat her the same.
Morning my brother
Have you heard from our sister or our mother?
You seem bothered
Did you see the images of home they didn't want you to see?
Did the mail finally arrive on your street?
Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see.
A little of what you believe
And all of what you're told
If it didn't come from their mouths or from their screens.
Is that what you believe?
But it's too late now that you now what I know
About our mother, our fathers, our sister.
Our mother had a tapestry with our history
Our beginning, our journey home, still a mystery.
The tapestry frayed between us, on every boat stop
Through every destination.
Do we even have enough threads for the next generation?
Now we have sons
And we have daughters
Tell me brother
How good is their morning?
- Soulomon Johnson