For the love of Bacon and Gamin'.

Going back home…

I’m in Chicago. Or as I used to lovingly call her: Auntie Chi. Flying in and seeing her winding lights and dark corners do not dredge up the fires of home coming; it brings frigid indifference. I am close, a stones throw to the womb of my birth, Mama Mil (Milwaukee) and I dont feel anything for her either. Auntie Chi and Mama Mil taught me the streets…how to hit heat in paper bags. How to sweat for your pay and use your hands as a resource, since the mind can play tricks. I have family within the skirt of Auntie Chi…but we dont talk and I met the cold slamming of doors a decade ago when I wanted to meld within her fold.

Mama Mil chastised me for being a weirdo; not black enough for the her rest of her brood. Not white enough for her neighbors. Not religious for her dogma. She sided with the dwindling soul of her old men she used to court; the ones with the shitty cheap suits or oil smudged blues rolled up to the shoulder reeking of cigs and penny gum.

I was forcefully shoved from her warmth to my racist Stepfather Hou (Houston) who hated my brown skin, kinky hair and would never fail to let me know through my successes and my failures.

So now, I walk through O’Hare airport with military gaite and boardroom stare. Auntie Chi and Mama Mil dont owe me a damn thing; I bled for right to walk through their livingroom carpet with fake arrogance and mud on my shoes. As much as I hate Kanye West, I agree that you can’t come back home after you leave it. So while I love my Midwestern memories with bakeries, breweries and Schwinn bikes with neon plastic tassles, I am not longer Midwesterner. I am a gypsy with no home except the steel guilded bombshelter called ‘will’.

Thanks for the memories, Mama Mil. I hope you and Scott Walker work your shit out. And Auntie Chi? Get a better fucking airport.

23 May 2012 ·