Faces on the Wall

Rain falls, soaks my three line suede, but after years in these streets,

I don't really mind. My body aches, my eyes droop, a week of hustling for projects that most likely will fail and I'll never see a dime, but man the things I've learned, and the chance to shine, just one time. It's worth it. The life of a corporate hustler, jockeying for interviews and promotions.

I prefer to stay independent, to be a fly in the room, to observe, but not partake, not because I wasn't invited, I wasn't. I wouldn't fit in anyway with portraits on my skin of those who inspire and guide me. With my direct words, free expression, and ... can I really go back to that life? 9 to 5, what a way to make a living, Dolly rings in my head, a siren of a genre I once thought of as trash, racist, and poorly written, now calls to me, tells her and her sisters stories. They show me there's other paths, others have taken, ones I could never, even if I .....tried?

The amp in my hands, like that I own, but much much heavier. Quality and power, it gives weight. I grip tighter, this isn't mine, you have to take care of it! But why? Why do things that are mine not matter, but those of others have their weight in gold. I look up from my drowned toes and see a mural I have seen before, bringing back memories of friends and neighbors I once knew in my homeland. I live now in a multicolored/cultural nation, a quilt of complexions, but in this city, it's as starkly white as the wall that makes this faces foundation.

Everyone is mixed, yet only those pale faces make it to the walls of our TVs, informing us about the lives of others, living their lives of comfort which, I'm sorry to inform them, is barely functional in "developed" countries, but in their 3rd world havens, they are the kingmakers.  And this face, the one that I recall from my memories, blurred and smudged, it's on purpose that the angles meld and morph.

It's to draw your eye away from the preserved colonial architecture, the colonial legacy this nation has thrown off and yet taken on again, not with a true king, but a king class of individuals. Former colleagues, friends, ex-lovers, they all make up the democracy and are the choices that we have. Not a single black face amongst the presidents in a nation of the colored. My home, where right and left clash and people die because of ptsd fueled police, bias, and misunderstanding. 

At least they chose someone of this color, they gave it a try, they chose a man from a broken home, a white mother and a black father, who's politics and decisions may I disagree, but yet, he gave hope and change to so many. He showed that there can be a president who is darker than cream. Not a Christopher Harris, but a face on the walls of a "White House" that makes people stop and stare in wonder and awe, as this face on the wall has made me.