This Body
This Body
Those on the bottom can see but can’t act,
Those on the top can act, but can’t see,
O Lord, please free me from this body of Death, America.
Dear Lord, How am I to stay composed, as the very fabric of justice decomposes from
beneath me?
My footsteps are weighted down by the sounds of my ancestors screaming for my freedom, as
they realized that their deliverance was only in the life to come?
Am I to wait until the life to come?
Like some passive animal, always turning by backside to be flogged by the excruciating
hypocrisy of white supremacy,
You ask me to hold to your precepts, you ask me to hold to your law of love,
And yet for me it is like Atlas, bearing the weight of my oppressor’s ignorance, all the
while attempting to free them from their codependency on my subjugation,
Even for those who see, their loss is still their gain, Privilege,
But for me, loss is the sound of riotous rage burning the streets of Chicago,
And yet my Lord,
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things unseen,
I must believe, even as my circumstances bludgeon me from the inside out,
I must believe that you have a plan.
We need not loans, but a redefinition of what it means to prosper?
Can you grant us at least this my lord?
A vision of repentance in which top and bottom begin to fade away beneath the sound of
righteous equality?
If we can just touch the hem of your garment?
If we can just touch the hem of your garment, then we shall be healed.
And this body will know the sublime language of harmony.
Lord God, do not free me from this body of death, America.
For in my freedom, my brethren will still suffer.
Rather, free this body from its insanity.
So that we all may sleep and dream soundly.
Copyright © Woodrow Lucas | Year Posted 2008
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