Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Strong Black Woman (Poem)


Everyday whether online or in the real world the phrase strong black woman finds a way to stand out. Recently Keri Hilson had an emotional breakdown on twitter. Years ago she may or may not have had some drama towards Beyonce. At that time Beyonce's stans jumped on a hate train and decided they'd forever taunt Keri Hilson. They stuck to their word. When Ms. Hilson tweets something, has a public interview, or just shows up somewhere people start up the taunting. While she has never spoken on the verbal abuse before, she definitely showed all of us that the negativity was getting to her. Her words inspired me to write a poem about the strong black woman. Enjoy!

Strong Black Woman

I don’t want to be a strong black woman anymore
Being strong means to handle anything
Being blind to the hatred
Shedding no tears
Putting on a pretty girl mask
Having no fears
I don’t want to be strong
After dealing with years of verbal abuse
Being told I’m not pretty enough
Somebody said she’s better
Not having the perfect skin
Nor the perfect body
Being told nobody wants me
Because somebody thought it was funny
If being strong means to smile anyway
When love or lack thereof comes around
And it knocks me down
If being a strong woman means getting back up
And pretending like nothing ever happened
Someone else can have the title
I’m tired
Tired of trifling ass men
In the beginning, they act like gentleman
Throwing out nice compliments
Suggesting going on dates
But then they never make anything happen
And I’m tired of the daddies that forgot to comfort their daughters
He claimed he’d wipe her tears away when she was hurt
And keep the bad guys away with his overprotective interrogations
But after handling finances
And getting out of 12 hour work days
That daddy is nowhere to be found
And I’m tired of the mamas pushing their daughters to be strong black women
She’s only two
Teach her how to cook and clean like her mama
And teach her how to look up to her daddy
Teach her about meeting her prince charming
Don’t teach her how to be strong
How to pay all the bills on her own
So one night she’ll find herself at the bar
She’ll be flirting with some man
But the drinks will be on her
Cause even he’s fallen into the myth of the strong black woman
He’ll think she can handle it all on her own
He’ll think that he’ll have to do nothing to get her
He’ll devise of plan to get her out of her dress
Or maybe he’ll just lead her on and never actually call
But it’ll be okay because she’s a strong black woman
She can take rejection
She can handle pain
See don’t teach her that
She’ll never grow up to be what you want her to be
Instead she might turn into me
But I don’t want to be that woman anymore
Someone else can have that title
I’m tired

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Lashuntrice

Lashuntrice