Colleton River Plantation Club, South Carolina

At a few minutes to one o'clock this morning, I received an alert on my phone and, as usual,

I checked to see what it was.  What I saw practically knocked the breath out of me.  As I read on, and felt the weight of what I was reading sink me deeper, I felt compelled to spread the word, and to add a few thoughts of my own which, at the time, felt utterly meaningless.  Yet, adding my voice to the deluge that would surely follow, still seemed the right thing to do.  I shared it to my personal Facebook profile, and a few moments later, to the Dreams on a Battlefield fan page.  In those moments, the only thing I could say was this: "With every Black life taken and denied the full measure of justice deserved, privileged gun-slinging hate-mongers are granted license to perpetuate more of these heinous atrocities.  When will enough really be enough?"

Of course, what sleep I managed to get was filled with troubling, frightful dreams.  Having been back in my native land for little more than a month, the senselessness and emotional torment of hatred, fear and intolerance are, once again, a constant part of my psyche.  In my dream state, the pain and frustration of our socio-cultural crisis here in Jamaica regarding the lot of sexual minorities, and the similar emotional dissonance experienced by the Black nation in the United States, became indistinguishable; and I found myself not only tossing and turning for most of the night, but awaking in an almost panicked state.

Once I got up, settled down a bit and ventured onto social media once more, I could see that the fire-storm was again stirring.  My mind went back to places that I have not allowed myself to visit for a few years, and ended up on an unpublished blog that I have kept since 2009.  I don't write much on it these days, because the pained words that were often expressed are in my past — or so I thought — but I could not stop myself from reading through bits and pieces of a few posts.  Then, I happened upon a forgotten poem that I had written back in 2010.  While it spoke to a pain from a slightly different set of circumstances, it seemed to encapsulate my thoughts and feelings about the ostensible "Race War" taking place in parts of the United States.  While we grieve, protest, write, and work towards achieving the harmony that many of us desire, let us remember to not make enemies of every White face that we may see.  They are not all participants, willing or otherwise, in the conflict that is taking place.  I think it is time that this piece made its way from the shadows.  It is from this piece that I have derived the title for this post.


Let us all join our hearts and voices with the victims and families of Charleston, South Carolina, and all those for whom the embrace of justice will forever be out of reach.  Let us petition the Universe, for all our sakes, that this madness that seems to be spinning so utterly out of control — these horrors that we, as human beings, seem so intent on visiting upon each other — will soon end.  Like the distant sunlight in the above photo, I believe the hopes that we live and breathe, for a brighter future for our world, are still within reach.  Peace and Love.


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