The Actors & The Awards
Halle Barry portrayed a crackhead in two movies, lips ashy,
fingernails caked with dead skin—mimicking kin for the full package.
Life in each puff of dope sealed evolved on a camera screen.
Scene. She learned how to dump a black crack baby
while crazed for the rocky debris, dipped it
in blessed water which has become America's trash—
a treasure to a possible other. It looks
sad enough to sell, and we buy it with box office praise
—if this person acts the role right it'll hit home.
The real Halle Berry would never introduce her children
to that kind of life.
She knows the gutter is no place for any person,
knows that human beings are flesh knots on late night strolls,
cars a carousel—which high horse you riding,
the red, white, or blue?
White when Halle played a fair skin house slave.
She fell deeply in love with her massa' and thought he'd change.
She'd say, 'Well, I's really hopin', massa'.
'Youse' needin' sometin' —
I swore Bonet would have changed for her—
'Hush yo' mouth chil’’
Mulatto just the right light that she'd pass
for one of them. Is that what it is, to be
one of them? In the movie Queen, she was raped.
In real life she waves on the red carpet in a blue ball gown
having known that the rape is ongoing. She collects
her award that she invites inside her home, invitation
hard to prove when questioned. She sleeps at night.
The role of a raped slave woman is still alive in our mothers.
The statue of a man, right.
How does she turn the stigma off
or has it been wiped away?
Denzel Washington played a soldier, a blues man.
Detroit red to big brother Malcolm X.
His role for being a crooked detective won him an Oscar.
And the big brother gangstas applauded him. It's believable
if someone in the ghetto sanctions the perfect depiction.
'Man up, niggah'
Home, the Jungle left behind. No more
visual takes and director's cut. They struggle.
The big homey comes home and wants back what's his,
a little girl skipped to my Lou a hopscotch and went trap jumping
down a well called a pipeline. If Denzel
would have stayed in the hood
he'd be the old head on the porch from sun up to sun down,
would have signed up for the army
come home to Medicare bills, and waited
for the enemy to cross.
Neighborhood Denzel, his hand gripping a Milwaukee's Best,
deemed these projects a wonderland with monkeys
batting bastards, Alice a bust down crackhead, devil in her blue dress
coochie-wet—we practice saving white women while
the black women cling to Danny Glover’s Mister scene. Scene.
Will Smith, the Fresh Prince intergalactic, is all about action.
Ali to Men in Black. And don't forget about Bad Boys. America's
black TV hero, though the world
talked bad about his daughter, his sons, holds
his character instead of the enslave mindframe—they did this
to Jesus and his discipline too.
His wife mixed
with a tenderoni—the talk
had to been difficult, Red Talk under every microphone
pressed under his nostrils.
—a sexual assault on the Oscar's stage
went unnoticed—
'well, she's a chick'
'we need to exploit black folks acting up’
—sweep the sexual assault behind the red curtain.
P. Diddy said it best: we'll take care of it at home.
King Richard kept rolling.
Chris,
do you know how many nights Will held his wife
from all the bad bald jokes,
her tears beading against Will's televised chest, cutting skin,
filling a heart estranged? It's hard being a black man in entertainment.
Nights when suicide played in Jada's brown eyes,
Set if Off eyes from the bus—
why do we have to be so put together? What was the joke:
a G.I. Jane? Half the venue laughed, a jealous giggle or two
that pinched Jada's nerve—I need you to act on this, Will.
The mother of his children, her hair gone like a bad breakup
—We don't ever speak his name. In a way
I'm glad it happened. The stain of blackness stuck.
This award service we strived to be a part of for years
ain't deemed the almighty God success ladder we work
so hard for.
They say: behave, boy. And I say, keep my Queen
name out your fucking mouth. This night we will honor
the black family, because they already think we a joke.