Pain of My People
The pain of my people,
it flows through my pen
The shouts ... the screams,
the wails from
generations of suffering
I spirit heard the painful call
of the first foot fall,
when my people disembarked
from long ships in chains
onto strange soil
Had our native tongue
snatched from our lips,
then was told to serve and toil
Beaten into submission with whips,
and our scarlet pain stained the virgin soil
Ever since then,
the kettle of our pain has been on the boil
And the burning clouds under the heavenly skies
were like a cast iron altar, upon which my people’s
painful prayers turned into dry evaporated cries
Even now, after so long a time,
the pot continues to boil
And I dip my pen into the scummed bones of tears,
overcome with grief
from the blood ink that flows
For my people were stolen, and given no hope
Seven years of servitude wasn’t enough cattle rope
With a chain of certainty around their neck;
knowing they would live their whole life as a slave,
many desired the tender mercy of the grave
And that spirit of hopelessness still remains —
witness the dope coursing through my people’s veins
Taste the apathy clotting the flow to their brains
They chose to overdose ... to let the numbness reign
And it’s killing me slowly to see my people
throw themselves under the tracks of a genocide train
My people’s pain has driven them collectively insane
Sorrowful tears of my people falls like brimstone rain
Now the precious pain of my people,
it overflows through my pensive, piercing pen
And the tortured slave dreams that my ancestors had,
is etched on the faces of their rejected children
Copyright © Freddie Robinson Jr. | Year Posted 2017
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