‘No justice. No peace. Only winds’

My soul cries. It quivers, sometimes like the human body too long exposed to the cold. Feeling the cold is a reminder that I am still alive and have not yet succumbed to the silencing lifeless final stages of hypothermia.

But the winds blow cold, so cold. The winds carry with them incessant nagging whispers to at last “shut up.” To lie still. To close my eyes and ears, and finally yield. To lay my pen down or at least to switch courses.

The winds. They are the dream slayers. Purveyors of the status quo fattened by the slaughter, demise and dehumanization of the sheep.

OPINION

The blustery winds yell: “What are we going to build?”

The wind catchers respond: “A wall!”

“And who’s going to pay for it?”

They respond at fever pitch: “Mexxx-ico!”

They’re not.

But the winds blow… They course through America with uncertainty, fear, hate and divisiveness. The winds threaten.

The winds tell lies and convolute truth. The winds oppress and dispossess. Delude and obsess with minutia — use sleight of hand in the public theater of a democracy.

The winds are neither Republican nor Democrat, though often cloaked as opportunistic bureaucrat. The winds are neither secular nor saint. They are sometimes politicians, sometimes pimp preachers, sometimes exploitive community activists. They blow nationally and locally. They stir chaos and social tumult that are antithetic to “one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

No justice. No peace. Only winds…

The winds of injustice leave the carnage of black males slain by rogue police scattered across American streets. The winds of inequality consign black and brown children to a public schools system that remains separate and unequal. The winds favor economic disparity. The winds of indifference, racial disharmony and hate segregate America.

The winds destroy. They seek to divide and conquer. They leave us twisting, having been buffeted into a state of icy numbness to moral turpitude. They have left too many of us sinking in the quicksand of “alternative facts” that dominate the American landscape.

The winds blow. And yet, truth shall prevail. This I believe, even in these turbulent times.

Truth. The truth about life beyond the Beltway. The truth that glares and stands forever. The truth that breathes, laughs and cries. The truth that bleeds and dies. The truth that resounds above the lies.

The truth inherent in stories about “black life” that most often do not rise beyond their ghetto cries. Their stories are my stories. Stories of life and stories of death. Stories of hope and breadth.

These are the stories — the truths — to which I have chosen to dedicate my pen and my life — and which I share in my forthcoming book: “Soul Cries: In Black & White and Shades of Gray.”

It is my fifth book — one that I must write, for it is like fire shut up in my bones. Even amid the winds that keep telling me that I would get my “just due” as a writer if I could ever stop writing about “all that black stuff.”

If only I could “ever come off the West Side” and write about life — something, anything, other than black folks, black issues and black life.

But isn’t “black life” life?

I take solace in my belief that everything that God has for me is for me — nothing more, nothing less. And I endeavor to be true to myself, to my heart and to my people, as conveyed in the book’s dedication: “For The People of Chicago’s West Side, especially For The Children…”

So even as the cold winds blow, my soul cries.

Email: Author@johnwfountain.com

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