Strange Fruit, by Michael Colbert

- Written by Michael Colbert

Strange fruit was a song I most recently heard, and when I first heard it, it was by Nina Simone, and as I listened to the very words I realized it was a very sad song with a nice slow rhythmic jazz, blues beat that caught my attention as I love blues and jazz. It’s about black folks in an American historical time of the early 1900s, a heart-wrenching reality of insane brutality against man (nothing is taken away from Nina Simone’s view) But to me the song also made me realize that strange fruit was about the atrocities to all people of color rather black, brown, red, yellow or white! For every positive there’s a negative, for the universe is truly balanced and you can’t have one without the other…

To me strange fruit was really in the beginning when Adam was coerced to foretake of the forbidden fruit (A strange fruit) that would open the eyes and mind to not only the good but the bad too. For it was said that “in the beginning all was good,” there was no shame, for all was good!  Strange fruit is white children looking on and cheering the hanging of black men on trees because they are there with their parents and neighbors looking on and cheering, they say racism is not learned or taught from the public school, it’s learned at home at the dinner or kitchen table….STRANGE FRUIT is adult white parents discussing in the home in front of their children or using the words of  “THOSE NIGGERS!”  

STRANGE FRUIT are black parents’ frustrations of white America’s injustices, brutality, and bigotry of racism, saying at the dinner table, “those white crackers,” “honkys” devils” in front of their little children, embedding in their minds to now hate white folks for their atrocities accusing white folks of starting this mess. STRANGE FRUIT is a basketball game of intense pressure of one opposing player being elbowed in the rib cage by the other opposing player and then when he retaliates by elbowing back, he’s called for a team foul!  STRANGE FRUIT to me is, “right is right and wrong is wrong” and it can’t be substituted for the other, even if it’s a natural balance of opposing forces, STRANGE FRUIT is a newborn black child coming out of the black womb of its mother and its attention is on its mother, the first nourisher is his or her mother, its first love and sight is its mother, a black woman, its first beauty is the black woman, so now it identifies with its black self. STRANGE FRUIT is black men just loving black women and choosing none other, STRANGE FRUIT is a white race of people loving its own kind by all means necessary and none other, STRANGE FRUIT is one loving self first to understand that within self is all others. STRANGE FRUIT IS SEEING a black man loving a white woman for who she is because really, BLACK, BROWN,RED, YELLOW, AND WHITE is really one under different shades. STRANGE FRUIT is that it’s natural for eagles to love and mate with eagles, geese to love and mate with geese, ducks to love and mate with ducks. STRANGE FRUIT is to see all love itself and kind first in nature, but it’s STRANGE FRUIT to see black folks loving all except self, that’s STRANGE FRUIT, rather it was systematically taught to a people to be enslaved and brainwashed to not see their worth in self, but to see it in all others.

They say each tree is known by the fruit it bears, but STRANGE FRUIT is not always on a tree of one hanging by the neck, STRANGE FRUIT is Jesus Christ hanging on a cross being ridiculed and taunted, STRANGE FRUIT is a black man saying I can’t breathe because a knee is pressed down on his neck. STRANGE FRUIT is a black woman being shot to death in her own apartment, in her own bed because of mistaken (far too often) identity. STRANGE FRUIT is systematic racism at its best, maybe worst (you choose). They say racism wasn’t an American thing, it was a world thing. STRANGE FRUIT is the country Haiti being the first to rebel in slavery against European colonization, dominance and the last to receive any major support from European fundings of major importance. STRANGE FRUIT is all the countries of color, that’s eurocentric in nature, that’s controlled by Europeans, that has Eurocentric blood, rather an island or just the land, seeing the white faired skin people being far more rewarding than their darker-skinned counterpart people of color, NO! Racism was never an American  thing, it was always a worldwide thing, just ask NELSON, MARTIN OR MALCOLM, STRANGE FRUIT is lighter-skinned people thinking they are better privileged than darker-skinned people rather aboard the American shores or off them, the light-skinned Dominicans thinking there better than the darker-skinned Hatians when they both occupy the same land.

STRANGE FRUIT is all the black men hanging on trees in front of white crowds of cheer, with each black man having the very potential to be the actual ones who may have cured cancer, aids, or heart disease, who really knows but the shadow of STRANGE FRUIT!!!!   STRANGE FRUIT is men taking away from man, slowing and killing the process to supreme greatness. STRANGE FRUIT are Jewish people being gassed and torched in concentration camps, or the Irish or Italians being butchered, Latinos, Asians, or Arabs going through a holocaust, STRANGE FRUIT is to love all in its own uniqueness regardless of color. STRANGE FRUIT is little ducklings following mother geese where ever they go because their mother has left them all alone, or a white couple adopting a black child, or any couple adopting any child. 

STRANGE FRUIT is a creative writing group of men and women of all colors and backgrounds, rather than editors, writers, teachers, prisoners, or loyal citizens with political expressions and freedom to express agendas. STRANGE FRUIT is the great audience that’s now participating, listening, and reading the great thoughts shared and expressed by Michael Colbert, Marvin, Carol, Ken, Marzian, Channing, Proctor, and of course Jaclyn and Sonny. STRANGE FRUIT is 2020 going out with a bang !!!! going out with the pandemic and bringing in the new year 2021 of promise, hope, and faith. STRANGE FRUIT is saying goodbye Trump!!!!  Hello, Biden! STRANGE FRUIT is having had a black man president of the United States of America and now a black woman as vice president in white America, black America, brown America, red America, and yellow America...peace!!!!!!!

Michael Colbert is one of the pillars of Re/Creation since participating in its earliest workshops on Rikers Island, and has been instrumental in developing our organization along his own personal journey. His work is known to all of our workshops for its passion and wild flights of free-association. This is his first published work. That's him with the crew pre-pandemic, in the green hat.