This piece was written while on a wildland fire in Utah after recently watching the devastating, heart wrenching documentary entitled I Am Not Your Negro (2016), about James Baldwin, this century’s premier gay, black writer and activist, whose work has inspired generations — including my imposter self.

This is my epistolary and homage to his amazing soul. May he rest in peace.

Author’s note: This was written in 2017, before the advent of what I call the “modern fascist movement” in America.

Since that time, things have grown both perilous and treacherous.

In this writer’s opinion, it is now more than ever imperative that voices such as James’ are elevated, studied, and taken to heart.

– Sif

(Photo: Marc Gerson)

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Sunday 7/2/17, 1806
Brian Head Fire, Brian Head, Utah
Division N, above Ipson Creek

Dear James,

Times are tough now in the U.S.

You and yours:
Strong, Regal, Black voices
struggle mightily.
Long-suffering
and for a long time suffering.

I cannot understand the nuance
of your struggle
against a nation who used your ebony toil
to pick, build, labor, and profit
only to institutionalize your infinite oppression,
crystalized as a function of blatant government policies.

Oppression as Law:
Make Broken,
keep disenfranchised
and relegated
to government-supported slums and ghettos,
experimented on biologically,
and left to rot
by the country that you built.

I’m so fucking sorry.

I fight to get them to understand—
to keep the history alive
to remember
to realize

But they don’t care.
They don’t fucking care anymore.
We’re lost as a species.
Derelict.
A cultural ghost ship with no hope of ever returning to our moral port.

Tonight, I thought abut Malcom and Martin.
the nights they died.
Alone, I became enraged, weeping uncontrollably at our loss—your loss.
Fists slamming
pain torsion
inconsolable.

Why do we kill the ones we need the most?

James, I’m failing.
In every way, every single day.
My despair and self pity are only finally ever-so-slowly metamorphosing into a white hot rage at our system
and defiance of our broken paradigm.

But I can’t fix it in time.

And I’m sorry that you gave your life for this, to this system.

I’m sorry, James.