Like Chocolate Do

The poem, 'Like Chocolate Do' was written in honor of Black History Month, the Civil Rights generation, and the thousands of under served youth attending Job Corps Centers across the nation.  I had the honor and privileged of serving at a Job Corps Center with staff for a successful pilot program initiated by the Obama Administration to provide progressive goals training sessions and workshops that guide students and clients to a new way of thinking that speaks and reaches beyond the circumstances surrounding them, and helps build and maintain productive, creative lifestyles they can be proud of.  It was truly a joy to see some of these young adults raise up from last-chance statuses to walk that stage and graduate with honor, earning their diplomas and certifications. Some have even gone on to continue their education at the university level. 

Sometimes clients would ask me questions on faith, and how to apply it to their everyday lives. Now as then, I can only answer with my truth:  Faith is an amazing power tool, but you have to BELIEVE for this thing to work.  You have to believe, over and over again despite what the eye can see. Faith begins in the heart, and brings visions of change that grow in the mind.  With positive guidance, those thoughts inspire the hands to take corresponding action. In this place of achievement, confidence is not only in our talents, abilities and gifts, but in their Source.  Faith is where it all begins, and faithful action, makes it happen.

Remembering the victories I witnessed at Job Corps brightens my day, but there are also those who didn't make it - those I cannot forget - bold young faces that were owned by circumstances they could not control - those who were unable to rise above the weight of their perilous worlds. I will never forget the faces that left campus on a routine weekend visit back to where they once belonged only to never to return, having fallen victim to the violence they'd almost escaped.  I wrote this piece for the young ones who pressed on despite circumstances to achieve, and for those who fell, never seeing or owning the stage they worked so hard to earn. 

He runs a race

With his chocolate face,

Where people value chocolate most,

when chocolate stays

in chocolate's place,

Where to take a peaceful stand alone

is insubordination,

And as comrades fall to incarceration

he questions each day he survived the first strike,

Tasting the toxic waste of bias

Till even his thoughts begin to stink,

And his brain starts to think

that it feels like home to suffer and burn,

A hater in waiting for the season to turn,

And the creature he becomes disgusts you,

frightens you,

One man's failure is another man's friend,

And then they wince with false innocence saying,

"How could he come to such an end?"

But in Jesus,

brotha can overcome ya,

It arouses you like chocolate do,

And irritates those with a sense of entitlement,

Lighting up the blind spots that guarantee the have-nots

get a damned good shot at living

in poverty and violence,

Till chocolate gives up,

Says it feels like home to be locked up,

To be punished for the autumn of this filthy adaptation,

For striking back in wild frustration at the miseducation he was first disposed,

Stabbing himself with the first tool given,

Stoned and owned by mushroom conditions

Needing hands-on faith, and a little less wishing

Cuz in Jesus, that's

how chocolate rolls

© by Arkay Evans