1500 Massachusetts Avenue, NW . #143 . WDC . 6 June 1994 regarding 5 June 1994
Elvert Xavier Barnes 'Street' Photography & 'Writings on the Wall'
I'm different than what I was the day before yesterday.
Yesterday and the many days and several years before that
I was one in the same. But, last night or
sometime just before the day began... today ... I changed.
My soul, my spirit, and myself
transformed and/or progressed itself ... into a new dimension.
I'm different from all the things, yet,
a sum of all of what I was before. Plus more!
I am different than what I was ever before.
All of what I was yesterday
and all of what I was the days before yesterday
are all now a very, very small part of what I am today.
While all of the past yesterdays
have contributed to but perhaps more contaminated
what I have become today
They nor you will no longer hold me back.
You nor they have 'no hold' on me.
They, like you, are just a 'part of my past'.
I am different today than what I was ever before.
It is almost as if the past is the past. As, it is.
But, this is different. I am nothing like what I was yesterday.
In that past life I would shed skin. Perhaps, like a snake.
But the body would remain the same.
In this 'new' me,
both, the body and the soul have 'forever' changed.
It is like a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly.
I'm no longer a caterpiller cralwing upon ground.
I am now a butterfly. 'Free to fly!"
A cocoon I had been in. A moth I may have been.
A caterpiller I was. And a nigger I have been 'played for'.
But, a butterfly ... I am. "Free to fly. Until I die!".
In order to be a butterfly I must first have been a caterpillar.
In order for me to be free 'some changes are gonna come!'
And in order for some changes to come ... some things must die.
excerpts from this poem were included in a photoessay pictorial collage presented to Elizabeth Mason and the siblings of Leander Barnes at his funeral service on 25 October 1995 at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Lexington Park MD.