Give. Thanks.

Thanks?

Give back what weathered hands, twisted backs and songs of redemption lay as the foundation to your stolen empire

A country built with feet on the backs of earth toned skin, so many times

That history is like a record stuck on the same song

Even though everyone selectively forgets the words

And man made illness fittingly will suffice to kill the rest

Blood continues to spill and overflow as they pretend not to feel it splash upon their wrists

It’s not as if any cultural compassion has ever existed outside of the wonder bread variety

Bleached skin, synthetic hair, contacts, erase the identity psychologically so that each time those broken spirits see their skin they curse & blame

They curse & stain

While the oppressor lays in a box and cooks, as if in an oven,
Set to 350, bake for an hour and let cool

Instant results without the minority component, privilege still intact

You are the face you seek to erase, for a price

To look like those they persecute, because they envy

Envy the beauty of brownness, depth, full lips, rounded hips and souls that have carried the weight of hate like battle wounds for centuries

They’ll never be as strong as those they seek to destroy so teaching self-hate is the greatest weapon they have
It’s the most effective

And each day, a country that stands behind the power to eliminate at the expense of their Swiss cheese conscience,
Swiss bank account transactions pending, could care less

About the deeds and wealth accumulated by the destruction of native peoples

Is another day lost

Land taken, redistributed and designated as “their”promised land

Blood money no longer passes hands

But hits accounts on a given date

And in hushed tones others speak of the societal rape

This land was our land, this land was not made for you and me

Don’t suit the lyrics to your history book lies

In attempts to solidify the world’s greatest lies

Nothing was discovered and no one ever needed to be transported by boat, head to foot, foot to head

As body excrements fell at the same speed of tears

On other brown bodies in fear

No legal documents written by the hands of slave owners, clothes made from cotton picked with my ancestors' hands, food produced and consumed at the expense of their freedom

Will not ever reek of entitlement’s stench

It’s filthy and morally defunct

The rungs of hope are hot like coal and burn flesh to the touch
See these ancestors rise yet again to smell the burning of their ambition

untitled

Broken steps, cracked by the pressure of dreams deferred
Tangled mess of red, white & blue
hung like a noose around the
necks of brown-skinned girls and boys
Brown will eventually turn blue, cold
& potential wasted will
cross the lips and hushed tongues
in the shadows where poverty’s bounced checks are written by the hour
on depleted funds in accounts with names unrecognizable, skin color undeniable
We were never meant to thrive
Institutional oppression, big words that carry the fate of the world on a silver platter, high in the clouds out of justice’s reach
because the notion of justice has been color tweaked
So the world within our minds & hearts becomes a battle zone fraught with fear and protective intentions,
distractions from accomplishments with survival as the means to an end
but it never ends
And faces begin to look real familiar behind glass walls, bars, at desks & on paperwork done with
ink of lost souls, each page more saturated than the next with
societal lies & hatred
We wrote the books on lives unlived with the pain of our silent scars
etched in backs, arms & legs
tortured for centuries by colorless beings who can’t see through our skin to reach our worth