Body Electric Body Electric 2018 Final | Page 3

Heaven is a Place Where Men Disgrace the Word of God Eson Ekpo, Class of 2019 #HeyBlackChild Eson Ekpo, Class of 2019 Men wish God into existence to make the unimportant seem fathomable and the illogical real, while disguising ration as the Devil’s ideation in order to hold men in contempt of their creativity; Galileo, Copernicus, and the man on the corner of 63rd and no where, who said ‘Hope is the white man’s way of saying try harder, a never-ending riddle composed of oxymorons and self-contradictions’. Some of us do manage to slip through the cracks only to be reminded that a nigger is always a nigger no matter how white the sheep’s wool is. It’s fleece tarnished the color slush makes against the sidewalks of Brooklyn, where Sammy shot Tommy and Candy shanked Jim for a dime worth of pebbles from a world that teaches men to hate women, whites to fear blacks, and blacks to kill each other. A lost cousin, another mother, a son gone forever, and a father who was absent when no one else mattered; and yet we pray to them. They smile and say try harder, but don’t even bother to look toward the waters where John baptized brothers, and ships sailed on waters that were calmed by voices of dysrhythmic choirs and Bibles blessed by liars. And… if we were created in God’s image, then what is the final picture to be composed of? Pixilated mosaics of shattered pottery and pebbles grinding against the pavement? Engraved fragments flash across our minds, as we piece together the shards, the memory of scars, and deconstructed puzzles resynthesized into images of Ghettoes. Rules must be followed to succeed, but when you step outside of the box, you are classified defective. Our objective is to be free from first world mentalities and backward fallacies of societies inverse, which equates to tragedy in the minds of the empty, as they wait for us to cross the line from poverty to solitary confinement. There is a fee for freedom, for freedom isn’t free, and no one can agree on this modern-day hypocrisy from ancient philosophies of procla- mations and declarations of discrimination from within a nation we call Hope. We must commit to this life called Civilization or we will be committed to a life called Sin.