FREE. But the tracks lead to nowhere

A photograph by Paul R. Abramson

Promises, promises, promises. Alert I remain. My imagination wanders. It will be different, or so you say. I search for evidence. In stone. A tablet. But I’m rootless, confused. No longer comforted by your assurances. Or the imprint of your words. I move about. Nothing has changed. I’m restless. Convince me otherwise. Give me proof. Show me the way. I’m free, or so you say, but these tracks lead to nowhere. Escape is no escape at all. Privation still resides within me. Your potent words are inert. Which I lament. I do lament. Show me the way. Show it now. That you know, is what you don’t. I need to find the way.

Paul R. Abramson is the lyricist and lead singer of the band Crying 4 Kafka. Crying 4 Kafka has been memorialized in Erika Blair’s book The Sanctity of Rhyme: The Metaphysics of Crying 4 Kafka in Prose and Verse (Asylum 4 Renegades Press, 2018). Paul is also an artist of note, and an Editor at Breathe. Otherwise, Paul is a professor of psychology at UCLA.

As a black girl, I have dealt with a lot of comments from others over the years pertaining my skin color and other features that make me a person of color. I still remember girls telling me my hair looked “normal” after straightening it, or girls petting my curly hair calling it “different,” treating me not like a person, but an exotic object. During the summer, when moments like the Black Lives Matter protests took place, I realized how many of my “friends” weren’t willing to say anything. It made me feel sad knowing they decided to stay silent. I also couldn’t believe the city I was born in would later be known as the city where the life of Floyd was taken.

— Naomi, Georgia

So, I’m white, and I grew up in a town that I think is about 75 to 80 percent white. I grew up in an immense place of privilege — I never had to worry about being racially profiled, I’ve never experienced racial discrimination, and I don’t have relatives who have been unjustly shot or killed by police. And my guess is most white people, specifically white people in my community, haven’t. That’s why it was so frustrating over the summer, and especially after the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor to hear many of my peers try to justify their deaths. I think, especially when it comes to the topic of racial justice, we need to amplify the voices of black people and people of color, instead of silencing them because we, as white people haven’t experienced the same. I find it completely ironic when kids in my grade talk about not experiencing harassment or discrimination by the police or our security officers while being white. Like, of course we haven’t. The point of privilege is that you don’t feel that.

— Eleanor, Illinois