This poem is important-For Men

Especially on this website when men are often under fire. I feel that we need to have poems like this written and read more often.

For Men

-Dominique Ashaheed 

Sometimes men are more than mountains.
Men like my grandfather
Prolific in knowing the difference
Between being epic
And being tragic.
Men who gather their street lamp 
Experiences and turn them into lightning bolts.
Fine tune suffering into fable and fantasy.
They coddle their nightmares until they
Are petals in the wind for blowing…

Sometimes men are more than oak trees.
They dig their heels into this life
Turn their backs into bridges 
Find God in the darkest places and 
Live in the light of their faith for the rest of their days.
They cook catfish, shoot rifles, rock babies 
Pickle and brine unthinkable things 
Line their shelves with mason jars and 
Shell casings. 

They are the men we forget to remember 
When we are dizzied and spent from 
The new age minstrel show that casts our 
Best and our brightest as crip-walking 
Puppets bedecked in gold chains and misogyny.
Theatrical and ridiculous.
We forget to remember the magic our grandfather’s
Hands held when they 
Pulled splinters from our palms and 
Spooned homemade ice cream into 
Pouting mouths and made everything better 
With a story.

Sometimes men are wider than oceans.
They swell and rise higher than their specific geography
Men-who stuck and stayed through unlivable 
Circumstances that pulled and stretched 
Their humanity into a thousand dreams deferred 
Because they saw beyond the strong winds 
Of their own hardships 
To imagine us with scholarships and families 
And mortgages and passion-

These men are the ones who held 
Secret meetings on back porches 
And chewed through their words 
Sliding them over and around their teeth 
Until the words and the women believed them.
They are the first poets.
They write sonnets on handkerchiefs and 
Keep them in pine boxes.
They whisper their wishes into their 
Woman’s ear at night.
Tell her the things they cannot bear
For the light to hear…

They are Jesus all over again.
Cornrowed and tattooed-
Divine and condemned

They are the ones we need to remember 
When we forget
They are misspent and holy 
Indignant and temperamental 
Slow to start a fight but quick to finish it.
They are the bloody bones of our story.
The ashy-knuckles and teeth of our yesterdays.

Sometimes men are just men. 
Live hard, love hard, fight hard, and die hard.
Their sins are punishable by death.
They apologize infrequently.
They cry when no one is watching.
They are the tremble and roar of our consciousness.
Fire starters shit talkers and way makers.

They are the problem and the solution.
The apocryphal parts of the kingdom.
They are at the top and the bottom of the hierarchy.
They live their lives trying to make 
Sense of that contradiction.

They are men before they know it.
Before they even have language for it…
They have defended their mamas and fought for their sisters 
Died for their brothers.
These are the ones to remember 
When we forget.
Even as they hurt us.
Even as they twirl around the strange and macabre
Dance of masculinity and get the steps wrong.

They are the means to keep our heads up.
The ones we have been waiting for.
The ones we have always had.
The ones we will always have.
The ones who never leave.

The ones who have to leave.

Sometimes. Sisters, men are the best things 
We’ve ever done. 
When our sons alchemize from our bodies 
They fight our biology in the womb
Rewrite the feminine template into sword fights and solitude.

They burst through human skin
With a mission statement.
It is written in blood and tears.
It is more permanent than any stone tablet could be.
Before Moses was a prophet
Moses was a man.
And we should remember.
Yes. We should remember.

When we forget.