Wash Back Days
The past got a wet way of coming back
to unsettle the present
with haunting future dreams
Who moistened the bed
with such troublesome memories?
There are dark terrors in the night
for the children
of those whose fathers ignited the fright
Colonialism terrorism days
are washing back on the European shores
Time has run out,
there is no safe refuge anymore
Every land that the northern explorers
set sail to wind,
they built forts along the coastline
everywhere their war ships would dock in
Anglo manifesto: the world was theirs to claim —
every land discovered
was stamped with an European name
Greeting the natives with a peace pipe and a gun,
broken arrow friendship treaties
was how the New World was won
Centuries of taking colonial buried treasures
back to their homelands
left flotsam floating on the sea ...
a trailing legacy of perpetual Third World poverty
Cattle prodding the subjugated people
with grazing dreams of freedom,
only made them yearn
to be loosed from their colonial yoke
But their constitution was too weak
to stomach such rich hypocrisy
Therefore they could never break free
Until the winds of time
sent most of the conquerors away,
returning to their own lands permanently
Now the stormy waves of their past sins
have come crashing back on their shores again
New Age terrorism comes
with the waves of refugees now streaming in,
unhinging the doors of democracy
Fear was the face of colonialism terrorism
reflecting off the surface of the seven seas
Horror hollowed the eyes
that witnessed such degradation and misery
Those unclean waves are washing ashore salty tears
from long ago grief foaming years ...
And the human sharks have now followed the bloody trail,
back to the places where the children of the oppressors dwell
As waves of stolen heritage debris
washes upon the European shores
Dirty causality of the dark reality from the past,
can’t clean the wet night terror dreams
that the children of privilege now have
Copyright © Freddie Robinson Jr. | Year Posted 2018
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