Cover Image: Portrait of Lucy Jane (detail)
Image courtesy of the poet

A clinical and health psychologist by training, Dr. Roseline Armange (Lucy Jane), earned her doctorate in cognitive psychology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Sorbonne, Paris) with summa cum laude distinction (mention très honorable et les félicitations du jury). Her scholarship exploits the intersection of politics, race, gender, literature, philosophy, and psychology. "How Can You Rise Higher" is the third poem by Lucy Jane to be published on the Entrée to Black Paris blog.

How can you rise higher where the racist’s acid attack of the White fragile male mind wants to make you feel small?

How can you rise higher when your spiritual consciousness calls you to be firm on who you are in color, culture, and all that makes up who you are ?

Certain people will say to me, "You just have to remain silent."

Is silence enough to help a fellow sister or brother in need of authentic help?

Do we have to close our eyes every time the threat of the Other makes the fool racist one turn himself into a Satan dance?

Do we have to silence our mouths every time a racist one makes his voice loud in order to reverse onto you his own racist fear of himself?

Do we have to remain inanimate objects of a fragile mind that needs more therapeutics than the oppressed one for which the use of majestic silent treatment is the given response to this 21st century modern racial colonial pressure to preserve his spiritual honor and human dignity?

For we will never remain silent

Never remain silent against the threat of smallness’ conception of humanity

We will never remain silent in front of the oppressed’s threat that has long seeped into my mind.

My rage is not a common rage

My rage is part of a human rage

An emotionally intelligent rage, as all emotions serve the cause of rising higher

A rage that descends from on high, as all emotions contain the cure for rising higher.

For in my rage, I find Answers.

For in my rage, I find Peace.

For in my rage, I find Love.

For in my rage, I find Power.

For in my rage, I find Sounds and Words,

Ways and Truths,

Liberation and Freedom.

For the master’s tools will never conquer my Higher House.

For the master’s tools will never destroy my Higher Heart.

For the master’s house will destroy itself in my Higher Heart.

For in my rage, I found Higher.

From Algeria to Martinique

A shared suffering

Between my clients and me

The world is thin.

Encompassing Love through words

Encompassing Love through healing

Encompassing Love and building strengths to repress silence

Encompassing Love and sociopolitical thoughts to extend thinking and critical healing.

From Martinique to Algeria

My heart is the sound of a broken heart on the cross dying in repentance for them all.

From Martinique to Algeria

The revolution of Fanon’s radical Love and colonial war

As a taste of shredded bones and fresh blood, dismantling Western Egos.

From Algeria to Martinique

Empowering cultural rights as the taste of endless freedom of beingness

Empowering cultural rights is my birthright onto my certificate

Empowering cultural rights is my birthright onto my civil rights

Empowering fairness is my birthright until death die and life rise and rises again.

Paris, 26 octobre 2021 at 1:00 AM

Between my thoughts and me, decluttering spiritual confusions of an Egotism alliteration.

Between my thoughts and me, midnight and silence as the smell of God’s grace in disguised Peace.

Lucy Jane

Portrait of Lucy Jane
Image courtesy of the poet

To read additional Lucy Jane poems on the Entrée to Black Paris blog, click on the links below.

In Memory of the Past, Present, and Future

My Soul, God, & the World