Mary Dragon Poet Rhyme

Dance Tetris

I used to fantasise about gangsters,
A bad guy who would change for me.
The movie industry told me, the music videos and news stories. 
Men acting like children or women dancing like trash, those were my options.
A young Dancer, trying to experience culture that was growing and never stopping. 
A young girl from a comfortable culture, new and made of many. 
Running from her own but false ideals of authenticity and creativity, constantly played to me.
Processed my grief as a young one, listening to music that was meant to keep me poor.
Promised the artists abundance and left them soulless and sore.
I was in IIn LA in 2015, on skid row, overwhelmed with what to feel.
Standing with William, 17, an ex singer in the church I was giving with... Who had just finished a drug deal. 
He told me he could sing, I dared him in my naivity.
He belted Amazing Grace at the top of his lungs, his sound vibrated through the city.
Walked along Hollywood boulevard the next week, stayed in Beverley Hills. 
Did no one ing see this from my tour group? 
No dots connecting? How are you sleeping still? 
Clung onto appropriation as a way to honour what I always knew, 
Though grew to disown and rebuke the influences that stuck with me while I grew.
False masculinity, femininity, the furthest from the healthy woman I wanted to be. 
Expected to speak on and shake my appendages, 
Overload my expenses and for fun, poison my mind.
Young white girls throwing gun hands and popping  for thousands, creeps watching, satisfied. 
Not advocating for anything, just other appropriators at the desk.
Ticking boxes, discussing talent, deciding who's less.
Sequins and pigtails, thigh slapping and Tik Toks...
I can no longer identify with mainstream competition dance tetris, which is facaded as Hip Hop.

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