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.

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.