Everything is broken
In a way you don't understand
Safe within your bubble
Isolated from your fellow man
Granted safety from your birth
As loathe as you are to admit
Privilege is a dirty word
But it's one that unfortunately fits
White of skin and comfortable
With the gender of your birth
How oft do you gaze upon us
And consider us of worth?
See the ones in charge of us
Aim gunblades at this half
Pray, are you just as incensed
Or give a shaky laugh?
If the sword or gun pointed
Doesn't aim at your head
But at those of your fellow man
Do you still feel the dread?
Are you content to stop and stare
As nooses are fashioned?
Knowing you've escaped today
The rest of us are shunned
Do the pointless deaths incense your soul
Stoking violent flame
Or when the victims aren't of your ilk
Is it just a silly game?
Everything is broken
In a way you could understand
If only you would reach on out
To pull up your fellow man.
Driving is not a sport for the unrehearsed,
practice makes perfect on a speeding track.
The steering wheel is a discus, blunt and capable of slicing/dicing.
A handbrake? A pull-snap-stop bone break.
Electric windows are guillotines; seatbelts are nooses in softer attire.
An Olympian goes for gold; drivers should settle for bronze on a road.
in midtown, twin clock towers chime.
their peal resembling tumbling coins.
procrastination, now a crime,
consummate idleness purloins.
youth may clutch her bottled seconds
to transact on a rainy day.
she addresses urgent errands.
handsome faces gallop away.
i've seen my own spring and wither
between these effortless minutes.
cherished vanity's coy sliver,
wasteful without observed limits.
i'm liquor-free and off-caffeine,
walking in sunlight on cool grass.
crunch my vegetables, staying lean,
extra sands upon the hourglass.
lost my rosaries. almanacs!
are charming nooses, rave and posh
pocket planners build sky-high stacks.
moments have no spares, cut the bosh.
shouldn't spend my flowers wantonly,
chastising walls, scaling degrees.
there's never enough time, truly
to claim wealth from its poverty.
I’ve kept the bone-ash circle open—
chalked in wax traced from your last reply,
the one you coughed out sideways
between a mirror and an echo,
Just to reiterate, it read.
(Though you’ve unsent it now—
the smoke still mouths it back.)
The salt forgets which door to guard,
whether you're enemy or friend.
My tea leaves knot themselves
into nooses. The knife won’t keep
its edge unless I say your name
with my mouth full of soot. You know
who you are.
We only spoke three times—
I still remember your laugh.
I burned your coat—
the one already nicked at the cuff,
lined with lint and one of my hours.
The smoke limped east,
then circled back.
I still leave the latch loose.
Not for you—
just in case
some ghost with your gait
remembers how
my spine once knocked
like a drum left running.
In our hands, what have, we have, that governments cannot take.
In our hands, what can, we make, that no-one can steal or break.
In our hands, we have, what others may not.
In our hands, is what we have, that we can use and help a lot!
Governments have done it wrong, nooses of money around our necks,
But we have something better friends and it is what is in our hands
So open your hands and you will find the very thing you need
A talent, a song or a handy mans tool, look friend you will see.
The choice is yours, take it please to help a friend in need
Don't charge money for the thing you have, but do what is needed for free
As each one looks and sees what they have, each one can share with another
Fix someone's broken plumbing, while someone else helps babysit for a mother.
When we use what we have, we go against greed and corruption.
We can complain, yes it is true but what has that got us but nothing.
So open your hands dear friend of mine, what is that you have
Barter to fill a need out of love not money my friend and you will see
and show the governments of the world, there is a better way.
A Lesson in History: How to Subdue a People
Be brazen in thievery and sweet-tongued deceit
To, of their lands and people, take receipt.
Merchandise their inhumane objectification,
And keep them checked with generous flagellation.
With threats of nooses around their necks, or mutilation,
Deny them education for continued Blaxploitation,
To engrave ignorance and inferiority in their genes,
And achieve their eternal subjugation by any means.
Pretend yours are the magic words to open doors,
Seize their diverse tongues and give them yours,
Forbid songs of their motherland in your fields of cotton,
So their origins, after few generations might be forgotten.
Confiscate their identities and give them your name
And refuse them every chance at some historical fame.
Rewrite as idiots and cowards their dead heroes and braves
To kill their ancestors again, even in their graves
But beware, for they’ll pull your cobwebs off their eyes
And in time, in bits and droves, see, hear, and begin to rise.
Their voices will grow deafening and their impacts more felt;
None can eternally hold a people with a whip and its welt!
From your parapet of pity you prophesize and proclaim,
That the widows of the tailors dug two shallow graves.
To mould the unmoulded into suits a crane,
who makes such dreams built of rain, served on a the back of your undiscovered pain?
A topographic phrenology that undulates the benign.. a course of repression not duly prescribe. While consciousness draws closer ticking over time,
we hear of other mumblers, shuffling for their dime.
Their mumbling over and over what's your sure once was mine.
Their mumbling over and over what's yours now must be mine.
So once again willing to put in the time.
Castaway your wings sink to the sublime.
Indulge in divulgence, balance the the unclean, tightropes are not mere nooses for a canvass set unseen.
Old friend Democracy
There you are again
Finally
We thought you might have left us
Forever
Breathe
God Almighty
Breathe from your knee
And rise for every one
Like a black statue of liberty
Over the old ways of Confederacy
Put away
The power that rules
The gangland world.
Inhale the air and take our fear
Exhale a new century of equity
Release a revolution of new riches
Made of healing and advancing
All
A cosmic rainbow of color
Arcing
Over the wheat fields to the steel cities
A baby’s coo from her mother’s cradle
Born from where the sun begins
Wrists slipped from shackles
Voices loosed from nooses
Boots lifted from the backs of necks
Soot cleaned from Mother Earth
Democracy
Rise from your knee again
Breathe
Breathe
A familiar kind of destiny.
To be free. To be free. To be free.
Dark echoes of the past reverberate
In Mississippi voices filled with hate.
This morning nooses hanging from a tree
Remind us all of lynching history.
Some people claim great progress has been made
And racist attitudes, in time, will fade;
If this is true then why do people try
To resurrect the Old South's battle cry?
To say Jeff Davis was a patriot
Is simply vile and apoplectic rot.
He was a traitor to his very core
In spite of false heroic Southern lore.
The South was built upon the backs of slaves
Who found no freedom 'til they found their graves,
And those who try to sanitize this truth
Reanimate the hate of John Wilkes Booth.
oak bark suckle Gorillas boycott nests
dentists flee cobwebs contraband
prisoners hang nooses plates snowball
Crosses and x's burns and hexes
Thread and rope nooses and cross stitch
Thread of time yet to unwind, to release the sands of time
Turn the hour glass to its side and hope to save some time inside
Take a single grain of sand, take it not lightly to understand
If you take that sand for granted, stitches come undone to show under the mask
The noose will slowly tie you down, take you into the hour glass
So maybe you could be seen as iconic as a hidden time piece
There is no escaping from the sands of time, it chokes you lifeless with it's twine
You can try your best to escape, or wait for someone to turn the glass sideways to hold your fate
I am black and I say to kindred flames...
Never assert nor cry "things are the same".
It is the height of dishonor to our fathers,
Our hidden figures of the past, and our martyrs.
We no longer must hide. No need for underground trains.
Do not keep blaming injustice. It's a crooked cane.
Wait for the hand of the oppressor? That is madness!
Why would the oppressed ask the slave owner for access?
Let's take it upon our lettered selves to advance.
So, do not say "things are the same". Now is our chance!
If one hidden figure can succeed, there are no excuses.
If one hidden figure has engineered, where are the nooses?
It is a disgrace to our history to assert "things are the same".
It is a dishonor to our hidden figures...a noose and a chain.
As the night collects your debt
Find this the rotting door now thrust,
creaking screams align the mire
Loosened shadows coughing dust
in a world now set afire
Worry gathers in the mist,
along a crooked staircase rise
Nooses hang from rafter’s twist,
portraits gaze through swollen eyes
Smell the stench of fevers past,
sweat does stream of wallowed reach
Moors in line of wretched cast,
lessons taught but not to teach
Break this bread of mirrored shard,
slurp your lime serrated drink
Write as if a napkin bard,
any thought with which you think
Last, these days of sorted lanes,
walking chains and lockets bore
Weakness in your heart now claims
of a time you lived before
Stare the darkness now you keep,
forcing out a sad regret
You shall sow the fear you reap
as the night collects your debt
“WE AIN’T FORGOTTEN…”
You cried a smile
shadowing anger
beneath a canopy
of love
Your necks filled nooses
tied with Christian knots
that never failed
Your wombs challenged
the holding holes
of sanctified graveyards
You kneaded gospels
from the dough of pain
and fed starving souls:
You moaned songs
with groans echoing
echoes from the depths
of suffering spirits—
Suffering spirits
whose fortified bent backs
gave rise to a flourishing nation
The fruits of your labors
have now ripened:
dropping pregnant seeds
germinating liberty
upon justice…?
today
the rain fell
steadily;
her tears
reminiscent
of waters
drowning justice
struggling
to survive
tidal waves
of deception—
seeking to douse
the flame of hope
held high
in hand—
an elusive lady
struggling
to stand
her anchored
mooring
After the nooses and chains on ebony skins;
after the assumed witches burnt at the stakes;
after thousands lost their lives in Crusade wars;
after Jewish mass executions by Nazis......
I've seen and felt the muddy pool we had thrown
ourselves into.
I still feel horrified when I re-read history books,
and feel myself cloaked in humiliation and shame
of the humans we were before.
I have learned that I cannot change the past,
but I can act on the present,
offering servitude to humanity;
offering servitude to common good.....
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