Marlon O. Carey

EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT

Every element is relevant
And significant
Like a herd of African elephants
Marching slowly through the tenements
Or similar to seeds submerged in sediment
I eventually emerge to serve as evidence
A phantom menace
Like my lame ass ex-girlfriend
Who attempted to insult my intelligence
But she was merely a victim of her parents’ inherited prejudice
And furthermore she was jealous of this
My apparent penchant for dispensing sentences
With relentless effortlessness
But nevertheless
Now I am independent
And reluctant to discuss those tragic events
I used to stay bent to prevent myself from venting these sentiments
But now my regimen includes a true testament of my existence
Engineered with elegance and executed with eloquence
I’m on a quest for excellence
And rather than follow trends
I’d rather set precedents
Like maybe the first Jamaican-born American
Elected president
But EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT
So now I’m
Constantly counting on consonants
Trying to crack the constraints of cold cement
This is more than just a lyrical experiment
This is mental medicine I’m dispensing
Inside your minds
I’m fencing with ignorance
Hoping I get a chance to displace it
And replace it with statements like:
EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT
You can’t erase if you don’t face your latent racism
So now I’m searching for those subtle similarities
Between myself and the Chinamen in Tiananmen
Or lower class lesbian ladies living in Lebanon
And I’m finding them
Wedged between the cracks
Embedded in the lies they tell me about my melanin
To hell with them!
Racism war and corrupted governments
All that I can recommend is to keep peace prevalent
And climb the mountaintops
And keep on telling them that EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT
So while you’re strolling through the tenements
Pondering those sacred elephants remember this
I hate to sound repetitive
But every bit of our existence
Is compounded by essential percentages
Of positive and negative so let it live
Blood bones and brain matter we are all relatives
And all relevant and all heaven sent
And all majestic instances of intensity
We are all meant to be mingling here amid indents at ease
Subjects suggestively strapped to our predicates
We are all delicate
and all dedicated to the liberation of all continents
So keep this thought prominent
Memorize its every consonant
No matter what persuasion you may happen to represent
Black, White, Latino, Asian
affluent or indigent
EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT

—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
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