humming sounds sweat down their face people shipped across the seas. Still, the soul sing chained on display sold as a slave forced to clear the crops and pick cotton on plantations humming sounds still The soul, sing, raped, violated, whipped and hung the souls of my Louisiana ancestors still the soul sings taken from a land chained up men, women and children their souls ripped out what memories loss, skin scar blood into tears sing from the soul shame the devil the fire burns in my heart. My soul rest in hell and I will join in soul singing.
You can’t see the real me
Cos I’m preconceived all through
I’m a slave and you are free
Though you speak as if subdued
Cos you serve the cult of Themis
So your words come out managed
Freedom’s your romantic thesis
You’re a usual kind of savage
Double minded, weighed and measured
Multiplied and taught to pay
And we share the same pleasures
In details and every day
What’s the difference, if there’s one?
Slaves are saboteurs, you say
While you spoke this, slaves all gone
And you’ve got to work all day.
Fear is a feeling that leaves you in a state of confusion, like when you get burned, the sting hurts so much that it takes all of your attention.
Fear can come in many ways, by way of physical, by way of emotional, by way of observation, just to name a few.
Fear should always give us a clue, to the type of environment we are in, the type of negative that might come and do us harm.
Harm and Fear have a relationship, negative forces use harm and fear, to control and manipulate outcomes, making us unable to move forward in life.
Life will give us fear, and we will need to learn and avoid fear.
Fear will give us tears, make us suffer, make us slaves, and many other negative ways.
So be aware, stay clear of fear, and stay on a path that will take you to fulfill all your positive dreams.
Lifting prayers to God, today and always.
The world is a ghetto
Filled with beggars, gypsies, tramps and thieves
And then a whole bunch
Of hapless fools without a clue
They are in fact the real slaves.
The major religions after all are designed
To assuage the lot of this ghettoed mass
Who are slaves to their own mind’s habituations,
With hope and fear, dogma, and conformity,
And not the masters amongst them
Who fear not their freedom
Having no need for intermediaries
Go about their lives,
Be it under the radar
Or in the spot light,
With dignity
The world may be a ghetto
But it’s the best one we’ve got,
And slaves can always hope to be free,
And even sometimes find a master
Who will show them the way.
(10/26/25)
(In his opera ‘Nabucco’, Verdi included this song.
The dispossessed Jews represent Verdi’s own
Italians, who were being oppressed by Austria.
It's an anthem for exiles everywhere.)
Go, my thoughts, on golden wings
to where my feet would love to tread,
to where the blackbird of the twilight sings
as day subsides and shadows spread,
to where the gentle murmurings
of languid streams console the dead.
Oh my land, so fair, so lost!
All our troubles come from men.
Can the sunlight crack the frost?
Will I see my home again?
Carry me across the waves
to where my soul will sleep at peace,
to where the ageless architraves
disdain our turbulent caprice:
where none are owners, none are slaves,
and winter yields to summer's lease.
Now This!
Individual Housing Units – Thousand Oaks
Individual housing units provide scattered site permanent supporting housing to individuals throughout the city of Thousand Oaks. These units are integrated with existing housing and
Stepup.org auctioneers of slaves in Ventura County
Unincorporated districts outward from Camarillo assembly of value will not rent slave to governor without extortion.
Assembly Member Irwin
Are you ready to submit the report on earnings
To Congress?
3416 characters left
These messages are being captured and archived in compliance with the Presidential Records Act or the Federal Records Act
You’d mind us kindly once again,
for our good health, and the wealth
of the nations.
You mean … you’ll mine us,
ours will be the running sweat,
the burning toil to unshutter the breathing vents,
drain the dark shafts, pump the carrying oil, then
back to work with bright canaries
strapped to the buckling back.
We’d sing our bowed-head, whistling songs
underground in the damp earth of memories,
where we’ll again be wed
under the stars of your crosses and banners,
our dry roots will knot like twisted longtime lovers.
The grand old parents left seawards so long ago
taking the deep gold and crown diamonds
with them, and we were left, lonely
children in the wilds to fight it out
with dusty dingoes and the lion prides.
Now the proud, younger lords return
to exact their blood inheritance, tax free.
A century of tomorrow’s sunsets
will see the grandchildren abandoned
on these seething shores, again to kindle
fires against hungry tigers and slinking panthers.
Show us the canary.
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
Stalked all their life
Stained by a crime not committed
A permanent mark on black skin
A reminder how we will never fit in
Labelled as criminals
Despite being exonerated
Probation was for those in need of reformation
Not those who already good behaviour
But any chance to stereotype
The oppressors will take their chance
To keep the invisible chains of oppression are locked in and secured
A way to surveil those who now walk in the light
Constant checkups, now a normal routine
Having to ensure their record is squeaky clean
Being suffocated by the fear
Of breathing wrong
They'll do anything to keep us behind bars
Freedom they promised, yet freedom we haven't received
Being watched doesn't equate to being free
Especially when we still hang from the trees of your critique
You can't claim slavery ended when we are still slaves to your constant surveillance
Not when incarceration is used as a way to keep us hidden
Not when we live a life of normalcy
Yet are still followed
By the law that claims to help
Yet shoots us as soon as we open our mouth
You can't claim it ended when we live under the power
Of the white man
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
If the UK is as PC
as some would have us perceive
(tho' Britons never never never shall be slaves
Boadicea's turning in her grave)
it's incorrect on two counts
would you believe
and the US we should see
as between '52 and '22
it was a Queendom
not a Kingdom
and either way
that's sexist so
to speak more accurately
accordingly it should be
the United Sovereignty
Expelled from paradise, directed down to hell
Whose court is talking about justice here?
Yours are the apples, and your garden blooms so well
Pick any fruit, and treat the snake, my dear
The cruel punishment will never put them right,
Your congregation of the disingenuous slaves
The triumph of the law will not be glorified
By their rants expanded through the airwaves
If it's the other way around, what about
The high intention of a servant to command
Slaves become masters, so you see their snouts
Stick everywhere, your privacy is scanned
Sisyphus pushes up again his cobblestone
Choirs sing the psalms into the painted sky
Whilst in his tiny room the last bookworm
Hears the voices of those who refused to die.
Minds turned into images
Barren moments, parched feelings
Drowned in haste and unease,
Self-indulgent and covetous
Desolate technology slaves
Imprisoned in closed cabins
Chained to the chairs
Eyes fixed on the screens
Human skeletons with dried hearts
Drained and deserted relationships
Torn emotions and tainted lives
Emptiness all around
Ruled by commerce and profit
Turning world in to market
With frozen conscience
Infringing the peace loving souls
Bred by craze, power and greed
Aimless swarms and awry crowds
Turning planet in to an oven
Yelling advancement and progress
Green turned into grey
Sky turned into smog
Breeze turned into beast
Violating nature’s chastity
Where are the relaxing rooftops
Trees and the chattering birds
Clear sky and the morning dew
Seducing sunsets and cozy evenings
Lost in the crew of human creatures
Serene, pure, tender and loving
Living in isolation and disenchantment
Waiting for the return of olden days
Seems a forlorn hope in mighty milieu
Crafted by the self-centered masters
Impervious to human virtues
But, the hope never dies
From the top to the bottom,
The world is nothing
If not a flaming cauldron
Pulling us in, you, me, each and every one
Down a slippery slope
Into the breach
Because we can and must,
And when it comes
How do you rise to meet the tide,
Or do you waiver, falter and fall?
This moment when there is just you
How do you rise?
While all around others cower
Because they know not what it means
To rise
Each moment we arrive
In a field littered with the fallen
And the falling
While all around others depend
On what we have yet to draw
Everywhere you turn
You see the needy and the helpless
Drowning because they never learned to swim
Waiting and watching for those who know
To do what is duty bound
And so it goes, the few rise and the many sink
Their cries the same, but oh so different
You, me, to each our own
On the cusp of a crux
That is it all
(7/20/24)
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.