The word black has many different connotations. The image of the color (as in outer space black) has many different connotations, while the phrase black America or black culture has a whole history of its own.
I've recently used the word, "black," in a poem, and upon reading the poem, from what I can tell, some people were miffed by my use of the word "black," because they believe it connotes the same kind of black as in black America or black culture. I want to make it clear -- it doesn't. Rather, the poem addresses oppression in general.
If I were to speak of black America, I would take the task rather seriously (as opposed to using it in what's more or less an exercise in metered verse). Moreover, I'm weary of speaking for any demographic other than my own -- it's not my place.
While writing the poem, I used the word "black" only in light of it being a single-syllable metaphor and adjective, which could connote a particularly significant result of oppression (especially of journalistic media and of content deserving to be remembered and considered in our educational systems) -- that is, darkness, blindness, the kind that can not only stop you, in your moving forward, but suffocate you at where you stand. (And my hair is black; it has recently become a distraction.)
BloomThe bulb blooms like an onion
cupped hands over hands
cut and falling – an echo
you harbor under your tongue.
It is seeping out --
a brittle lark of dust.
I smell the growth now rising
from my head, my hair,
a damp and ugly place
to hide.
It is grand, you say.
It is without seed.
But look – black suffocation.
*
What is in italics is dialogue spoken by the "you" of the poem. Regardless of what "black suffocation" refers to, it should be clear that the poem condemns the position of the "you;" it condemns the "you" taking pride in the result of "black suffocation."
