Black Man's Burden

For all the weighted years of empires Stockpiled with human grief For all the fallen towers of desires From which love has no relief For all the cargo of the heart and ships Tossed and turned where water whips Across storm battered seas For all the load of civilizations Buckling him down to his knees He staggers on, harnessed to deprivations Dry sands sucked bone white Gritting in the eyes of light No, not the donkey, he carried a savior On a bed of palm branches and praise Or the camel, that subtle old imitator With Kilmanjaro on his backside raise Even the horse would have bolted free Saddled so long to the tumor of misery. But him structure and kingdom fallen Under a barren weight of other’s greed Is harnessed to promise and burden With no reward to restore from dry weed His life, he eats the scraps of praise, lures That makes us want to excel, yet deplores The lost of settled home, the arid sense Of children littering his shame since sired At plantations whim, vacuous pretense Of sexual dexterity that history inspired And no reward in the imprisoned destiny Handed to him for a cultural legacy Do you know the weight of the other The burden of history on his tired back The dismantle heart, and no father To boundary self in a void so black? Do you understand how he self destruct Brilliant in what his false history instruct? He wants more than drugs for the drift Of night from club to club seeking it He has no base for promise or for thrift Stereotypes walled him in, his spirit Armed to fight, shoots blindly at the alien dark Killing his own flesh, strayed children in the park Look at the reward before him How rich he grows on subculture remarks The school dropout high on the rim White status from covert commerce in parks Where the broken comes to disconnect From suffering and defeat of intellect.