Zero Sugar Content (WARNING)

Reader Beware! Us Boca Chica women
have never had sweetness to spare. Handing out nary
cup of sugar to begging neighbor nor any kind word to
child. All I have to offer is 2 things: medicine and more-medicine.
Go ahead. Pinch your nose. Sour your look. So long
as you let what I say swish around a little before spitting it back in my face.

Here your humble homegirl finds herself
breaking into hives
taking on the role of apicultural critic. Cautiously
harvesting honeyed words with a bumblebee’s mouth
hoping to satiate appetites greater than a bear’s.
Suffering the ear-splitting bzz-bzz-bzz! of a Colonized people
stinging with “No” and “You can’t” and “You mustn’t”.
Coddling close-mouthed little codlings who eschew bitter wisdom
falling comatose
tasting for sugar in water trickled-down by
the
Pissing
Evil.
How much misery and debasement must be furthered in service to the enrichment of sugarcoating industries? From cane plantations to Cola factories…

I’m a failed musician by trade and by temperament.
My stream-of-thought a babbling brook
barely quenching the parched palates
belonging to pitiful souls lost inside
boozy weekend taverns, let alone an audience as distinguished as yourselves.
Imperfect messenger though I may be, oral tradition rages in the lifeblood of all descendants of Yoruba diaspora and I can no longer live by the proverb:
“Don’t be airing out dirty laundry in public.”

Skinfolk see me digging dirt and slander me grave-robber. Viewing unspoken history as dead words rather than lived shame. Better left
buried with the world today only serving as its tomb.
My kin forget it’s soil
defamed as “dirt”
which nurtures growth.
Sanctified salt deadens land and sea. Maybe through me
the ancestors will thrust a kola nut deep inside her womb capable of caffeinating us all out of semiconsciousness.

Ancestors shun this type of modesty, shaking their heads with a knowing grin toward
so called nègroes dancing to the rhythm of tone deaf kokoye respectability
which must toe the line counting out 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 lest they be crushed
underfoot.

Our foreparents bore witness to the “bad days” back when
dismal-scientists conjured their own voodoo
to string up black corpuses
to exploit the Work for their own yielded crops.
Wedding Earth at the end of their shotgun barrel. Replacing her maiden name “Mother”.
Blessed Immaculata,
their forever-virginal bride,
fatherless fruits of a centuries-long labor fostered and cradled by an Invisible Hand.
Blood, Sweat, Tears watered to a whine best served alongside crackers.

O, how can I convince brown-nosed skeptics mistrusting of any notion not sampled and overcooked on a Bunsen burner in the sterile silence of some kokoye lab?
Quote their Atonist text?
“Gather together and come; assemble, you fugitives from the nations. Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save.”
Sigh. Master-tools can’t dig what I’m laying down; their handle breaks on topsoil, never mind striking inner-gold. Anyway, I’m digressing with this pointed finger.

Maybe the fault lies purely with us. Stranded on our islands. Suckling coconut shells long after the milk has curdled and no longer sustains us.

The point of this long accusation drawn and aimed toward my people’s neck: Winoc “One-Hit Wonder” LeFleur took advantage of a girl the night after his first and final game for Boca Chica.

Ha! you think. All this ramble-n-preamble over some misunderstanding in a hotel room? A nègro sportscaster thought as little. Deflecting with an adage which warns, “Even a giant can trip over a pebble if he walks without foresight.” Gleaning a spoonful of sugar, I smirk: us stepped-upon rocks topple giants.

Much Love,
Valerie Kikelomo Cruz
Boca Chica’s songbird, muse, and second-favored daughter

1. 

   Wonderful ♥️