A Troubled Tale

It is fad these for people to assuage my rage As if words can bring back innocence and faith As if words alone is enough for this angry age Where his mother died with her eye on the gate Hoping the prison would dissolve itself and free Her child doing life for three times using crack. As if prisons and wars were not fail solutions she Remembered, the minotaur in its maze of rock Fed on black children, the garbage not removed Until every other week, and the stench from it That pandered to the prejudice ones and proved She and her lot was not worth the gift of it. And what of little Charlie, they all said he was bright He did not die in an angry drive by, he only fell In love once, too bad the other one was white I saw him hanging from a tree ... his was all hell Frozen and wrapped in fear. Listen me, dear child She tells this griot, do you know why am not wild Over one of us in the White House, Lord do knows I am glad for it, but expect nothing from it, let I be known he is just a tenant, which way it goes The House is still white and we own nothing yet. I listened to her in disbelief, that despair could be so deep And lost for words, when she finished, I bowed and weep.