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DeFINEd is a spoken word artist, author, and speaker from Dayton, Ohio. She is a first generation scholar, graduate of The OSU with a dual degree in Philosophy and Psychology as well as dual minors in Theatre and Africana Studies. Most recently, she attended and matriculated from The United Theological Seminary where she received her Masters of Divinity and has begun community workshops for Getting To Know Grief. DeFINEd has authored 3 books of poetry, Shhh…, There Are No Right Words, and Questions of Blackness. Her award winning poem “My Heroes” about little black boys as action figures was inspired by an art project which contrasted the plights of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin plus stories in between of black boys denied justice.
My Heroes
by DeFINEd
~~
Little black boys
are da most valuable action figures-
where I come from
We run da fastest!
(shooms)
super speed!
We jump da highest, stand da tallest!!!
We are stronger den everybody
(uhhh uggh)!
We think da mostest!
We are da best at EVERYTHING!
Our death rates even da highest,
(slump, snore)
just playing, I still ‘live hehe.
Dey don’t make many models of us tho,
Momma say it cost too much
and white folk only see one color- green.
BUT dey make us life sized!
5’2 to 6’9
erybody fit dat description!
and since one skin tone has to represent all,
dey just make us da nigga hue.
Okay, dat don’t sound like much
but erywhere we go,
we get more den 1 look.
We are da coolest!!!!
I prove it!
I had dis one,
he had da purple and black jersey
he played basketball
and he was strong
he beat da hulk…
at one on one!
He was like crossover, crossover,
going right SYKE! going left
driving down the lane
MONKEY DUNKED ON DAT HULK!
Hulk a sore loser,
He tore up the court
but dat’s cuz he knew he wouldn’t score no way
HA
and der was dis one
he had all dese long gold chains
and da fast red car!
Mercedes benz vroom vroom!
He got all da barbies…yeah
I mean, I ‘ont play with barbies
my sister she told me
see she was always talking bout
she couldn’t never find one
so I gave her one of mine,
my momma said I had to share…
wait, where was I?
oh yea
Black boys, why we da bestest
They age us 12-20
well cuz most of us get recalled by 21
our shelf life not dat long
But if you’ve ever been
Black Boys ‘R Lynched
you know dat from the moment
was first manufac, minyfac
from the moment we was first made
we had targets on our back
That’s why we run so fast,
it’s our onliest hope
of escaping those that try to cell us.
We jump high and stand tall
well, because we rather be typecast than shot at.
And we are stronger den erybody
cuz dey beat us everyday
try to whip us into character,
when we say we not da same.
Scottsboro 9, Jena 6, Emmett Till
My cousins back at home,
Death immortalizes the young.
It takes courage to be one of us,
Little Black Boys don’t live too long.
We make da best action heroes tho,
everybody want one…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Black Boy Bullets
by DeFINEd
~~
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves, and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees” (Strange Fruit excerpt, Billie Holiday)
Black Boy Bullets
have replaced nooses made for niggers
no more strange fruit
hanging from poplar trees
Brass badges got farmer’s markets
That pop up in our streets
where blue black lives hold tight to triggers
squeeze out Black Boy Bullets for bebe guns
resurrect little boy blues
little boy little boy
BLACK BOY
when blue shoots
assume the position
hands up
back open
can’t breathe
inhale Black Boy Bullets
the new jim crow
the same sad tune
No more nooses hanging niggers
strange fruit stolen from poplar trees
brass badges profit off farmer’s markets
placed in walmarts
With just one phone call
Blue black trigger fingers
Dial home
Smile for the camera
Point and shoot
black boy bullets humming little boy blues
Momma
why can’t I
go out and play too?
Why sidewalks hold funerals
and swimming pools too?
Why you beat us
but we scare you?
Crying black boy bullets
assume the position
nooses made for niggers
backyards target practice
Blue lives pull the trigger
But black lives hold the gun
Only the guilty would run
Strange fruit stolen from poplar trees
To fund farmer’s markets with prison sheets
and trash bags
Ever since
Blue Black lives
Agreed to
donate their backs
To black boy bullets
cement body bags
6 by 8 cell burial plots
Farmer’s markets
Ran by
brass badges
no more strange fruit
on they poplar trees
Too many flies
They want us fresh
They want themselves alive
Crying blue lives matter too
This one fit the description
He had a history
Don’t shoot me
I’m just the messenger
I wasn’t on duty
NO INDICTMENT
I was doing my duty
NO INDICTMENT
I was standing my ground
NO INDICTMENT
They music was too goddamn loud
…no indictment
And they wonder
why we call it
a holding pattern
Context:
My Heroes and Black Boy Bullets are poems I wrote between 2014 and 2016 which speak to a question which has been hauntingly articulated in 2020 but echoes throughout racism’s deep and pervasive history. When do I go from being cute to a threat?
From 2013 – 2014 I was finishing my final year of undergrad at Ohio State. In the year prior Trayvon Martin was murdered.[1] During my final year a Public Safety Notice went out from campus police describing a suspect as being a black male between the ages of 16 and 22 with variable heights as well.[2] In the midst of working on an art final I had requested to do which showcased the deaths of young boys like Emmett Till and Trayvonn Martin and the subsequent defamation of character after their murders, I wrote My Heroes. As I began listing the ages of the Scottsboro Boys, Jordan Davis, and a number of others for whom the judicial system had failed them, or worked as designed I should say, my despair grew.[3] The persecution of black males, black females, black trans people, black lgbtq+, of the black existence is an old and still very present epidemic, a truth some are just now accepting.
While I expressed this in my chalk rendering, I did so in my writing also. I wrote this poem out of a place of deep exhaustion, anger, and frustration that my brothers, friends and strangers alike that I looked up to, could not walk our campus and classrooms which they paid and worked hard to attend without being accused of not belonging and fearing for their lives. I wrote it out of frustration and weariness of feeling the need to call my biological brother and suggest he not visit any time soon for his safety.
“My Heroes” is a spoken word poem which lives in the tension of the collectible action figure, profitable within its box and label thus assigned and a threat outside of it. It is written in the voice of a young black child calling out the stereotypes of black boys admired and sought for their athletic attributes and prowess but feared and killed for it when white supremacy feels threatened and stands their ground. Their bodies must either be for sale or put in cells, otherwise their life is not valued.
Similarly, “Black Boy Bullets” written in the wake of John Crawford, Mike Brown, and Walter Scott reimagines the reality of lynching today previously captured in the Strange Fruit poem of Abel Meeropol and popularized by the soulful sounds of Billie Holiday.[4] Rather than the lynching characterized by nooses from trees, modern day lynchings are apparent in the wake of rampant police brutality which leaves our bodies in the streets for hours, and refuses to indict in the court months or years later. This reality is captured through the farmers market by brass badges, phrases I coined in this ode to black boy blues. I call them black boy blues because a bebe gun in the hand of black man in a Dayton area Walmart “justified” his murder in the same way a toy gun in the hands of a 12 year old in a Cleveland park “justified” his murder.[5]
Ultimately, the reality is we are not just now tired. We been tired, and some of us numb, even. Our accolades, suits and ties, degrees, respectability politics, none of it can protect us from a world offended by being asked to respect, at minimum, Black Lives Matter, These poems speak the victimization black boys and men, but I’ve also written about the violence enacted against black women and black girls as someone who sees herself in the tales of Sandra Bland, Atatiana Jefferson, and, most recently, Breonna Taylor; as someone who fears for her life at home and on the road.[6] Yet I question who will read and listen to the tales of black girls and black women, there rarely seems to be a right time to talk about us.
[1] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/florida-teen-trayvon-martin-is-shot-and-killed
[2] https://dps.osu.edu/2014-04
[3] https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/scottsboro-boys
[4] https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/abel-meeropol/strange-fruit
[5] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/tamir-rice-and-americas-tragedy/amp
[6] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/breonna-taylor-birthday-george-floyd-protests-louisville-a9551946.html
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