Whuppings - With A U

 Every now and then I catch myself waxing too nostalgic about whuppings

With emphasis on the vowel sound

To make it sound different than "whippings" 

So as not to equate parents with plantation owners

But I remember how my parents would beat me like a slave who didn't pick enough cotton

Recalling none-too-fondly the slash 

and the whistle of tree branches cutting thru the air

And the slapping thunder as leather connects with buttocks,  hips and back

As a child I learned I was  praying to an unresponsive god

Who rejected all my burnt offerings

Answering my supplications  with white hot pain

Id say my disrespect of authority figures started with my parents...

And their asinine arguments of:

“this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you”

Or:

"Shut up before I really give you something to cry about"

When Allah asks me to explain my brief stint as an atheist

I will point out the criss-cross pattern of belt-burns

That I carry that look like little crucifixions 

And I’ll mention to Him that I naturally only thought 

the same thing Jesus did in the bible about being forsaken...

I also learned how to strategize whenever 

mama sadistically made me go outside 

and pick my own switch of off a willow tree..

Now -I learned that you cannot just pick a totally dry, brittle branch...

So I employed the same process we now use to manufacture airplane parts -

picking one that only looked like it would last..

I swear white people are jealous for no reason - we really only dance better 

because we were taught early on by the sting of belts, 

And shoes, extension cords,  and Hot Wheels tracks...

...Into jumping up and down with both speed and rhythm 

like Watusi warriors doing the two step

I learned how to do the Dougie, stanky leg and cabbage patch - 

Long before BET became everybody's instructor,

I learned to contort and maneuver my body to make sure the end of momma’s belt

Did not make contact in the same spot twice 

In hindsight, if I only wrote down how hard I begged mama not to hit me again

Into a song addressed instead to a girlfriend

I would have become an even bigger R&B star than Keith Sweat ever was...

....

One day I saw my little daughter spanking one of her dolls for some imaginary wrong

And I realized all I had learned was that Black childhood amounted to an inheritance of hand-me- down torture,

A passed-on lesson that power is always measured

by how much pain you can inflict on someone else.

This is what my people were taught for centuries by people using

Rapes and manacles, pig ears and horse whips, 

The ghosts of which

Still haunt us in relaxer cream and light skin/dark skin arguments

And the reality is that a million whuppings didn't stop a million Black boys from avoiding prison 

the same reality is that -

a lot of those whippings that whites gave to blacks 

should have been given to their own children 

If not for this disparate distribution of parental punishments,

Every other Black brother would not have a probation officer...

And the worst terrorist in the world 

would not have turned out to be little Timmy,

Who, once he has reached the age of legal gun ownership

Has decided to avenge all those times he got picked on in gym class

I'm sure there are better ways to discipline kids

Than via same method that made Kunta Kinte change is whole name

Although I must admit, it sounds a bit ridiculous 

To rely solely on time outs for when Timmy cusses at his mama

Despite my nostalgic misgivings I can't help but think:

Timmy would have stopped long time ago if just one time...

His mama sent him outside and made him pick his own switch...