Where does capital end
and mere terrorism begin
untamed masters, tame
their subjects, until they're tame
enough to follow.
"A Serious Matter" is a free-verse-ish or "loose" villanelle.
A Serious Matter
by Michael R. Burch
Listen, love, it’s a serious matter:
I love you better despite the fetter.
I love you madder than any hatter.
Now even though you’re my chains’ begetter
and keep me your slave with that braless sweater,
I love you better despite the fetter.
You say you’re afraid that you’re getting “fatter,”
but your curves are my lust’s prime aider and abettor.
Listen, love, it’s a serious matter.
I love you madder than any hatter.
When you come to bed in sheer lace, my thoughts scatter:
first to the firmer, then to the latter.
I love you better despite the fetter.
I love you madder than any hatter.
Listen, love, it’s a serious matter!
Keywords/Tags: villanelle, love, love hurts, mad, madness, slave, slavery, lust, passion, desire, curves, lace, bed, chain, chains, fetter, fetters, ties that bind, mad hatter, madder than a hatter
Did you cry for me
when none but the crows
was both black and free
in them cotton rows?
When you saw me hung
did you cry for me
as my body swung
'neath the lynchin tree?
Such prosperity
must taste mighty sweet
Did you cry for me
when I didn't eat?
Heard you gone some years,
died in poverty
and I cried no tears...
did you cry for me?
Begin at treason acts of non allegiance
Human Speech
Business license is created to take from human voluntarily
Or otherwise
Advertising is not free speech
Use of surplus against legislation
Fraudulent bypass of poverty laws
Document theft from slaves
Slavery Acts
Calls from the job you needed
Connecting without the shove
Turning down the press
Finishing the letters in the heart shaped box
Quiting going to work
Letting yourself run out of money
Getting yourself back
strapped to a chair while wires
pierced my skin, tested my knowledge
Will this ever end? Come forth not
My tongue tells all lies, as it splits
down the middle towards your
demise.
My eyes turned black my skin crawling
With fear, as my speech comes out
I feel endless fear. strap me down as
The room shakes, come forth as my
Shackles come off I'm going to my
happy place.
An atheist living soul was floating above on deathbed,
because if he touched it, he would leave this world.
He let the pain out and screamed through his dying soul.
A guy who was once drenched in every bit of gold
comes to him and says:
“I want to make a compromise with your soul and body—
I will save you, but for the rest of your life,
you have to serve me.”
But then suddenly the man who created every bit of the universe
comes to him and says:
“I will save you, but for the rest of your life,
you have to believe I am real.”
Then the living soul thought:
It’s no different. Both are slavery,
but in different ways.
But he thought,
since he questioned God in the life he lived before,
he would face judgment for that.
Either way, he was going to hell.
He was thinking of every possible possibility
that would grant him some life.
But he died in his imagination while sleeping.
– THEBLOODYPEN
Shenandoah cries
Voice of a Leader
Echoes of a Nation
Tomorrow only the beginning
The change needing a change
Soulful hope
Skies above in realize
Direction from Heaven
White House woes
Freedom, Wisdom and Rise
Bitterness through emotion
Far from the Liberty shores
Darkness plight
Wonder of the day, and the offspring of thought
Turnaround to oppose
No Slave shall be
Rebel no more
Freedom ways
Impact says
Pathway to a better life
No more demands
Freedom by order and command
Honor and Leverage
Proclamation and Freedom is now a privilege.
Hot summers dry up the land
The dirt crumbles under the heaviness of disrespect
Fresh flowers adorn the land
Covering the uneven burial grounds
Overshadowed by privilege
What better way to claim superiority
By soiling the plantation they stand on
Ignorance crowds the air
Cast aside by vows of love
Tainting history with a wedding
The stories of black labour whitewashed into a picture of a bride in white
Covering the truths in a veil of fragility
Ironic how they use the innocence of a white wedding
To ink over history
A picture is worth a thousand words
A simple picture of a now conjoined family
Haunted by secrets of ownership
How the brides grandmother was once a girl
Who stood on this same plantation
Watching her parents become slave owners
A simple picture
Once innocent becomes a sinister backstory
A history haunted by the darkness of whiteness
Flower petals spread across the venue of black bones
Not to pay respect to those buried
But to honour love consummated on the grounds of black history
Smiling in pictures with a tainted memory
Plastered in magazines profiting off of slavery
But hey at least they gained popularity
The rush of emotion stilled
The air once consumed by an undiluted energy
Now eerily quiet
Something lingers in the air
Justice?
No something louder but hidden
A violence so silent
It could go unnoticed by those who don't care to see
Those who choose wilful ignorance
The streets once crowded by protest
Now sits empty
Brought down from the high of purpose
Now left with an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness
The stench of death plagues the streets
Where once voice and life used to meet
Now only emptiness you will greet
Only thing left is failed legacies and echoes of long gone feet
The people who assumed these spaces
Just like the streets now empty
The promises of a better future
Dead like the movement
Despite having enough strength in their bodies to go on
Mourning takes their time of what's lost
Hoping to gain the strength to march again
But as the world continues to hate instead of help
Slowly losing their joy, the best parts of themselves
They are tired though not from the burning screams for justice
Nor the tiring marches
But through a slow realisation that the world they live in may never change
The world drowns us in problems
Then expects us to breathe solutions
In a society that demands whispers of lullabies rocking them to sleep
Whilst we deal with the havoc they wreak
Safe in the silence of their homes
Black women have to deal with the chaos outside alone
The white man's mess becomes the black persons job
Our pay - racism
Seems familiar, reminds you of anything
Maybe, a modern day version of slavery
No rest for the wicked they say
So why are the oppressors still sleeping
The good are punished
The evil rewarded
I guess we just live in a one-sided system
Where being a victim, makes you a villain
Our worth determined by how much blood we pour
The more we bleed, the more we are adored
Our pain is entertainment, they'll never get bored
For them it's like a cure for the common cold
Like an answer to all the world's problems
For them we are a sacrificial lamb
Something to feed off of, then be rid of the scraps
The story of our lives
Used then are blamed for our cries
Then are denied of our rights
To be humans not slaves
An autopsy of a black body
One who suffered greatly
The body pushed past its limits
To the point it had enough and quit
A scalpel to their chest
Slowly peeling the layers of flesh
Noticing the rot
Hit by the stench of trauma
The body dissected
The organs removed
Leaving the body an empty shell
Of a broken person
Beaten by an unjust system
There was no hope for the body to be saved
It was always going to give away
The person that had owned the body stood no chance
From the trauma to the head
Consumed by the complexities of PTSD
To the bruises on the legs
From a lifetime full of abuse
Carrying a body hated by society
It was like a troubled home
A place that was out of control
Where the quiet screams of abuse
Are trapped within the cracked walls
Bearing the weight of secrets untold
It was damaged beyond repair
No amount of glue could fix the damage of what was done
The body could heal
But the trauma couldn't be undone
The cause of death: racism
This is what happens when you live a life on the run from discrimination
Beaten by the harsh reality of hatred
Isolated by a world full of prejudice
Living in an abyss of hopelessness
They told us our skin meant exile
That our joy would be put on trial
Because it brings rain
But how can they hate the rain when it nourishes the ground we walk on
The same ground that grows the food we need to survive
They want us to cower in the face of their Whiteness
To bow down to their egos and stroke it
For us to call them superior
And reprimand our own blackness
And repent with silence
But we were born strong
Strength flowed through our bloodlines
Coursing through generations
Our ancestors created a legacy of pride
That we their children will not allow to be broken
We have endured the stings of their whips
We have lived through the shackles of slavery
We have taken abuse from the system
Yet still remained outspoken
Refusing to be the beat up victim
And faced the inhumane conditions of incarceration
We were made to withstand any storm
To hold our own
Whilst being pushed around
To trust in the power of ourselves
To embrace the harsh realities of life
To continue to love
And balance the rain with our sun
To smile and not giving them the satisfaction
Of their racism
And to not be bullied by their discrimination
No trumpet blew, yet thunder came,
From streets once hushed, now lit with flame.
A tyrant's crown was cast away,
By barefoot hearts who dared to stay.
We Wear The Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar
After poem by Olabosoye Wemimo Olaoluwa
Love of our land's labour should make us proud;
The efforts, time, and energy put through...
Well enough to place our pride clear as vowed.
But we wear the mask of pain we don't plowed,
When slavery is to labourers in blue...
Love of our land's labour should make us proud.
Showers of rain ain't just of dusty cloud,
But of heavy downpour and not dew;
Well enough to place our pride clear as vowed.
Yet all harvest couldn't feed suppose crowd,
We become weary of need to pursue...
Love of our land's labour should make us proud.
Just an endless space to measure; unbowed
Hearts and heads under threat, government subdue...
Love of our land's labour should make us proud,
Well enough to place our pride clear as vowed.
Specific Types of Slavery Poems
Definition | What is Slavery in Poetry?
Poems Related to Slavery
bondage, labor, enslavement, servitude, captivity, serfdom, enthrallment, thralldom, restraint, work, thrall, grind, drudgery, indenture, drudge, toil, moil, subjugation, subjection, peonage, serfhood, feudalism, vassalage, bullwork, chains constraint, helotry, menial labor,