Hyperventilate

Talk to me
Look at me
Explain to me what your problem is
Don't give me no BS
Tell me what the truth is

You're not supposed to cry
You're not supposed to emote

We didn't talk to each other about our problems
We didn't
We didn't openly communicate
We'd grab a bottle

Suicide is the third leading cause of death
For African American males

It's when we were inebriated
That's the only time we got to talk about what's bothering us

Black men venting isn't taken seriously unless it's stand-up comedy
Everyone laughed at Jordan and Tyrese
But rallied behind Kevin and Dave Chappelle
But since I'm not funny
I just breathe
But every time I inhale
I just get a chest full of heavy
No air
Just heavy
And I've learned to 'man up' when that heavy
Starts to make my eyes sweaty
Because I was taught that a man
Being able to lift heavy
Equals strong
And strong equals tough
And tough equals good enough
But none of that equals fair
Or right
Or 'What's really been keeping you up at night?'

Maybe
We could vent to our significant others
If it was guaranteed that it wouldn't be weaponized against us
Have you noticed
That the bottle never judges
And that darkness
Feels like a velvet soft blanket that likes to love us
I vent
To my shadows in solitude then silence
Becomes anxiety's open mic
Nocturnal Epiphanies
In darkness I begin to see
That my insecurities
Are manifested in my melanin mating melancholy
With my ashy elbow my way through
The hardest things to do
As a black man like breathe
Like breathe
Be black
Like breathe
Be black and free and human
Is that even legal
Like breathe
But your black
So everything you do is labeled extra or aggressive
So I hyperventilate
I hyper vent to my boar hair brush
Because it knows what's on my mind better than I do
Caressing the signature of my essence
Softly as the bristles
Convince my follicles that it is good hair
I vent
To the chicken I didn't fully eat off the bone
Or Kool-Aid with the right amount of type 2
I'm the type to
Type away when I feel some type of way
Then delete it all and say 'ok'

I vent to my memories of cartoons being turned up
To drown out the volume of verbal abuse
I vent to those drunken adults after being molested
Then shutting up because I was told to just be happy that a girl touched it
I vent
Through the PTSD
Of surviving being black
In the suburbs with a family that is stuck fighting the ghetto
From secreting through their tongue at every injustice
I vent
To the back of my mind
As I ask my masculinity to be the little spoon
So I don't have to explain to my wife why I've been drying
My tears
On the back of her shoulder at night
I vent through poetry
That assimilates thought
I've convinced myself that trauma
Is just my dynamically written plot
And my character development must be my superpower

Ironically
We call each other brother
But I can't count on one hand
The black men I'm comfortable to vent to
But we can talk about sex, checks
And how 'I'm trynna get like you'
We say
'What's good?'
Because we already asphyxiate on the bad
We've kept our mental checks to a simple head nod in passing
Followed by the sound of beer bottle caps tap dancing
On the floor
And countered with a coerced toast to something more
'Manly'

I wonder
Is there some type of inhaler
For the thought clouds
That never leave your head
Out your mouth
But instead
Bond to your lungs tighter than a frighten child's grip on their mother's leg

It's as if every attempt
For a black man to vent
Is snatched away faster than what happens in the aftermath of a custody battle

There's no control of a piece of you being taken quicker than a
Gasp
Like every attempt for us to Exhale
Is just a wheezing cry for help

You wanna know
'Who do black men vent to?'
To be honest
We didn't even know we were allowed to