Family=Love

Anyone that knows me and/or reads my blog or has been to one of my poetry readings in the last two years or is a Facebook friend knows about my Honey Bun Aunt Sis. Anyone that has stopped by this blog in the last week knows that last Tuesday, Aunt Sis left this world for the next one. She had bone cancer, which is incurable, but she fought it tooth and nail for two years. When the end came, she went in peace in her sleep. My Dad, though technically her nephew, was one of her sons...considered such by Honey Bun as well as her four biological children. He was listed as her son in the funeral program and it was my Daddy that was by her side most often for the last two years and even before that. I knew that when she died, he was going to have a hard time. Daddy tried to keep his game face on, especially with me, but I knew he was hurting, and he let it out in his own time, surrounded by people that loved her as much as he did.

Now she's home with Jesus. She was a woman of faith, and I know that her faith and love was rewarded. I've written before that I believe God sends angels to walk amongst us...unpresupposing folks that come into this sometimes hurtful, harmful, painful, crazy world to remind us that there is always love. That was my Honey Bun.

Last week, I was in rough shape. There was a three day gap between when I received the news and when I would be able to get to my family. I am still unemployed and David was scheduled to work out of town on Wednesday and Thursday. We needed the money, so I had to wait until he came back so that we could pack and leave. The reality of the living is that we need to keep working cuz the dead have no needs. I was soul weary and heart sick on our drive from NYC to Ronceverte, WV. I was anxious to get to my family, and my Daddy, as he always does when we are travelling to get together, was texting me about every 15 minutes to check on our progress. When we finally pulled up to the Holiday Inn Express in Lewisburg, I basically bolted from the car. My Dad came around the corner, and up the road came walking my great-aunt and uncle Lilly and Sherman and my cousin Buddy. Right then I knew what I needed. I needed my family.

Like my Aunt Sis, my family is crazy as Hell. As we walked from the car, I looked in the window of the hotel lobby and saw a room full of black folks. I knew they belonged to me and that I belonged to them. My sisters had arrived from Atlanta about 15 minutes before we got there, and I walked into a room of familiar as well as unknown faces. But even the faces I didn't recognize were clearly people to whom I was related. Aunt Barb, Aunt Bud, Aunt Sister Mary Jerome, my sisters, my cousin Wendell and all the others had the stamp of those hills on their face. And damn if they weren't all beautiful.

Over the course of the weekend I became re-acquainted with family I hadn't seen in years, met family I had never met, and met at least 100 people who weren't biologically related but were people that loved my Aunt Sis. The church was packed, the service was rockin' and even though there were tears and sadness, hearts broken and fences to be mended, at all tims and every step of the way there was someone telling a story to make folks laugh. The Lacy's are a folk built for joy. We are an entire family of story tellers and flame keepers. Eloquence is a family trait as is a wicked sense of humor. And we are beautiful, so so so beautiful from the octogenerians down to the infants, the Lacy's, as my sister says, have good genes. Genes or not...it was the laughter and the love, the soul food and the singing, the praise and the memories, the open doors, open homes and open hearts....the family...that made us so damn beautiful.

I am sad that my Aunty Sis has left us. I am sure there will be tears in my future, but I left those beautiful emerald hills with so much joy, and a committment to knowing those kin more deeply, and that is a gift that I know my Aunty Sis wanted all of us to walk away with.

Family equals love.

RuPaul's Drag Race: Get it together!

To quote my best friend, Bebe Zahara Benet, the winner of the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race: GET IT TOGETHER!

I have been watching the third season of RuPaul's Drag Race, and while I think the caliber of the queen's improved over last year's dismal and largely untalented pool of talent (with a couple of notable exceptions), the unnecessary and community damaging drama of this year's season is really reaching the point where I am ready to walk away from the show.

Let me tell you why.

To begin with, the near violence on the show between the drag queens is really fucking out of control. In the first episode, when the two queens up for elimination had to lip synch for their life, I thought Phoenix's crazy ass was going to draw blood. RuPaul made it clear that her behavior was unacceptable....and then two episodes later Mimi Imfurst loses her fucking mind and PICKS India up and slings her over her shoulders.

Let me be clear. I know Mimi. We are acquaintances. I do not know her well, but she has been in my home, and I respect her drag artistry. I know that these shows are edited in a particular manner, and I don't believe she is as whiny and clueless as the show makes her out to be, but when she put her hands on another queen, I was done. It wasn't funny. It wasn't ok. And she deserved to be booted from the show. Love you girl, but that is the Lord's own damn truth. Don't put your hands on another person without their permission. You don't know what that person has lived through or what burdens they are carrying. As a survivor of intense physical assault, I promise you that I wouldn't have screamed when you picked me up, I would have put you in the motherfucking hospital and that is no damn joke. PTSD is nothing to play with.

Up until this current episode, I was LOVING on the South Asian Drag Queen Raja until she opened her mouth to talk shit about Stacey Lane, and, in particular, using Southphobic bullshit about listening to bullfrogs and sipping iced tea on the back porch. Let me be clear with you Raja you dumb heifer, if not for the radical, life threatening and courageous social justice work of SOUTHERN folks, PARTICULARLY queers and people of color, tranny South Asian half-assed drag queens wouldn't have a fucking chance in this world. LEARN SOMETHING before you open your fucked up mouth and start marginalizing people from rural and southern communities. How about that?

I HAVE HAD IT!

It is Black History Month. Hey Raja....do you know WHY we have Black History Month? Because MY great-Uncle Carter G. Woodson, FROM THE SOUTH, made it happen. Hey Raja, did you know that Stonewall only happened because BLACK SOUTHERNERS had shown the way? I am so fucking tired of folks from outside of the South perpetuating stereotypes of Southerners. I am from northern Minnesota. My Dad is from southern West Virginia. The most welcoming place, besides Minneapolis, I have ever lived is ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA! More friendly than New York, more friendly than the Bay area, but dumb bitches like Raja say shit on tv that reinforce and re-marginalize southerners that continue to lead us forward.

Hey stupid ass Raja....do you know about Southerners on New Ground (SONG?). Do you know about the Suzanne Pharr, and now Pam McMichael, both queer women to lead the HIGHLANDER CENTER in New Market, TN? Do you know anything besides how to tuck your tiny little dick into your ass with a little duct tape? I hope Stacey Lane shoves your ass in a Fry Daddy and eats you on stage.

I am pissed.

The South is going to rise again, but this time it is going to be queer people of color that rise up and claim their due and then beat the shit out of dumb fucks that run off at the mouth on national television.

POETRY: Honey Bun

I have a Great Aunt whose name is Edith Daughtery. Folks my age and older call her Aunt Sis. When Aunt Sis' grandson Ryan was born, she would call him Honey Bun, and so he started calling her Honey Bun in return. All of my younger brothers and sisters know Aunt Sis as Honey Bun.

This short woman with a giant's spirit still lives in the same house that is right next door to where the house she grew up in once stood. She still lives, in her mid-80s, by herself in Ronceverte, West Virginia. Ronceverte is the town where my family were slaves. My Dad travels from Charleston to Ronceverte to see her every other weekend, and this spitfire woman still works as a house cleaner, still runs the street like a fast teenage girl, and teaches the children's service at her church.

When I came out of the closet, she shrugged and said to tell her something that she didn't know.

I love my Aunt Sis, and I wrote this poem for her.

Honey Bun

Sweet like honey
She is
Those hills
Are powerful
Green shoulders
Hunched and laughing
Streams course along her
Telling stories
'bout blackberry brandy
Brewed up out back
'long side the white lightning
Home
Remedies
Fried chicken and chittlin's
Collards green like those hills
Just out the backdoor
The stone wombs
That sheltered Her
That child of 1709
According to the Bill of Sale
African embryo
Artificially inseminated
Across the Middle Passage
Implanted in those Hills
born from a coal mine
And mountain granite
Gave birth to a black bird
Singin'
Sweet like fresh honey
We shall overcome
As she built a bonfire
To celebrate Brown v Board of Education
Said, "Don't know who burnt down the Negro school."
Hehehe she laughed
"But I do know they wasn't sending my children back."
Black bird said, "I am old and crazy as hell."
She'll not be with us much longer
Daughter of those hills has bone cancer
It doesn't matter cuz she's been to the mountain top
And took us with her
Honey Bun coating our tongues and spirits
With sweet strength
This Black Bird gon' sing a little bit longer
Stronger than those granite hills
Spill stories like rivers of honey
Sometimes bittersweet memories
Of mill slaves marched off to glory
Hallelujah
Sweet like honey
She is all we could dream to be
Strong like those hills
Those Greenbrier hills that gave birth
to a blackbird
sweet like honey
sing us home.

-Brandon Lacy Campos
-New York, NY
-September 11, 2010

Working It Out/Writing It Out

So, I am in the midst of writing my first novel. It will be my second book, when and if it gets published, my first book being It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt, due out from Summerfolk Press this coming spring.

So this book, so far, is about a little kid, growing up in an abusive household, that all of a sudden finds himself wielding tremendous power. The first thing he does with the power is kill his abusive step-father.

Ain't that a bitch.

I am about 52 type written pages into the book or roughly 19,000 words. I know where the book is going next, and I am pretty sure I know where this book ends (though I think there may be some sequels to it). It is part autobiography and part exorcism, and writing it is like channeling an alternative mini-me with the power to see auras, summon spirits, and tear abusive stepfathers a new asshole.

Amen.

It is an interesting exercise writing this book, as I am following the old maxim "write what you know." The book, for the first six chapters, is set in my hometown of Duluth, MN. Much of it is set in an apartment building that I lived in briefly as a child that was actually an old convent. Next, the kid is going to be hauled off to the hometown of my birth Father in the southern mountains of West Virginia. I need to go and visit Ronceverete, anyway, to visit my Great Aunt Sis. But, also, I want to visit the place to make it more real in my memory, since the last time I was there was 18 years ago. This town is the same town in which my family were held as slaves, so there is some serious history in this place. There has been a member of my family in the county since at least the mid-18th century, and since 1709 we have been in the Virginia Colony. So, I am feeling the pull of the homestead, so I can capture the spirit of place.

It also helps that in my Great-Grandma's backyard is a century+ old tombstone, tumbled over, and the maiden name of the woman on the tombstone is one that is shared by my Great-Grandmother, who, incidentally, swore that this woman was of no relation.

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

Don't think that isn't going to end up in this book.

In the end, writing a novel is both similar and wildly different than writing a poem. Poetry seems to capture a single moment in time and reflect it back with some analysis but mostly raw emotion. A novel seems to take broad swaths of time and delve into the woulda, coulda, shouldas in a way that is both cathartic and crazy making.

Hold on to your diaphragms ladies...this is going to be a hell of a ride.

Forget 40 Acres and a Mule...Write Me A Check!

(I am taking a short break from my multi-part Minnesota story to share with you my thoughts on today's vote by the Senate regarding slavery)

Today the United States Senate, on the eve of Juneteenth, passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans and descendants of slaves for slavery and Jim Crow segregation. The resolution now moves to the House, where it is likely to pass.

I think I am going to pass on this apology too.

Juneteenth, the largely invisible holiday celebrated by few outside of the black community, is a celebration of the actual end of slavery. Slavery ended in the United States on 19 June 1865 when the last blacks held in bondage, in Galveston, Texas, received word that they were free. On that day no man could call another man property. Unfortunately, abject poverty, degradation, wage slavery, and violent subjugation were to continue, with state sanction and complicity, for another century. And anyone that has been pulled over for driving while black, been called a nigger, or been denied employment or housing because of their race, knows that while physical lynchings may be over, spiritual lynchings continue without regard to who may be sleeping in the White House.

Though this resolution, passed 143 years and 364 days after the actual end of slavery, is long overdue, the rider on the resolution clearly stating that it does not in any way support or condone or authorize reparation payments to the descendants of slaves invalidates the sentiment and marks the difference between an apology and an amends. I am not interested in apologies. An apology acknowledges action without the assumption of responsibility or obligation to repair what was broken. An amends is the assumption of responsibility for the results of ones actions and doing the work necessary to repair what was done.

The words of a body that once stood firm against human rights for black folks and continues to stand in the way of the liberation of queer folks is worth about as much as my total worth. Roughly -$46,000 or so…depending on the current amount of interest I owe on my student loans.

It is beyond time for apologies. In 1988, Congress voted to pay the 60,000 survivors of Japanese internment camps $20,000 each to help ameliorate their pain and suffering. That, my friends, is an amends.

I am no fool. There is a very real reason why the Japanese received remuneration for four horrible years in concentration camps while black folks received nothing for 400 years of free labor and horrific abuse. The 1980s saw a meteoric rise in Japanese international cache. Japan was an economic powerhouse and American business wanted to do it doggie style with Japanese businesses, and $1.2 billion dollars was a small price to pay for the return on their investments.

Most people of African descent have no idea from whence they were stolen. And, even if we did know, there is no African economic powerhouse that American businesses want to exploit. The natural resources of Africa are in the hands and control of Western business interests. The only reason to pay substantial reparations to U.S. descendants of slaves would be justice. The business of the U.S. government is business and investing in justice, though it pays great moral dividends, rarely creates capital gains.

So, I say, respectfully, keep your apology. It is meaningless. The wealth of this nation does not exist separate from the hundreds of years of free labor that created it. For some, this is an abstract concept, for me it is a reality. The family that owned mine was the Nickels family of Greenbrier County, West Virginia.

My family still lives in the town where we were slaves. My Father went to school and grew up with the descendants of the family that owned us. The economic privileges of that family, a century after my great-great grandfather was freed, were still apparent.

Our family records date back to 1709, for more than a century the Nickels and others before them earned wealth on my grandparent’s backs. No apology will free their spirits. No apology will remove the wealth from those that exploited them and put it in their hands or in the hands of their descendants.

In America, we value the ability to pass on wealth from one generation to the next. Parents pass as much wealth to their children as possible in order that their children will need to work less than, perhaps, they did. My ancestors did not have that option. Their wealth, the fruit of their hands, and their labor was compelled from them and their products taken from them to benefit those that did nothing to earn it except be born with white skin.

Keep your apology. I don’t want it. But I will take a check, and one for my brothers and sisters, parents, and grandparents, and every other descendant of slaves in this nation, children of those that built this nation. It is our due. You have been drawing from our spiritual and labor account for too long. I am marking your apology NSF: Insufficient funds. You will be charged a penalty.