Tag: Hate

Stolen

~ Vanessa, She of Letters ~ Leave a comment

They are unearthing babies,
Children
Who never had a chance,
Against a system we still don’t understand,
That takes and takes and takes,

My human heart hurts,
My sentient heart hurts,
My living heart hurts,
For a wrong far too late to correct,
And as the numbers tally up
Let us not lose sight of the numbers that are really lives,
Of the lives that were not lost
But taken
Stolen,
Genocide in and of our recent time,
And we haven’t learned our lesson,
As we hold stolen children,
This time immigrants in cages,
For being the wrong…
Color,
Creed,
Nationality,
Ethnicity,
Race,
An inconvenience to other plans,
Inconvenience in this land,
Stolen,
Stolen lands,
Stolen children,
Stolen lives

The Justice Salve

~ Vanessa, She of Letters ~ Leave a comment

Black and brown bodies
Have been desecrated,
Sacred structures
Have been desecrated,
Democracy
Has been desecrated,
By hungry hands,
Seizing power,
From lives, minds, hearts,
It is taken,
To feed a machine,
That converts likes
Into hateful rhetoric,
That converts hateful rhetoric
Into costed lives,
We stand on stolen ground,
Watered with the blood and tears
Of ancestors,
Who could see but not fully know
The scope of all,
Of what really was,
Or was to come,
We stand because our forebears fought
For the right to stand shoulder to shoulder,
To link hands,
In community of giddy multitude,
That makes the powerful quake,
We stand because
We have been desecrated,
And justice
Is the only salve
For these wounds.

What Stars Think

~ Vanessa, She of Letters ~ Leave a comment

Love,
Do you think the burning stars look on in pity
Of what became of their stardust brethren,
Who aim bombs at each other over disputed words?
Who sacrifice innocence over their idolatry?
Or do you think they see the quieter explosions
Of love,
Like ours?
That make living any existence worth while?
I hope they do,
I hope they see the love and dream of when they too
Are only dust particles in the universe reconstituted into life,
Conjuring that which is love.

Cutting Hair & Other Tales

~ Vanessa, She of Letters ~ Leave a comment

As they cut her hair,
Did they know their legacy?
Surely not,
Though it’s ingrained in everything
They’ve ever been taught,
Implicit and explicit,
Did they feel the weight of each lock,
As it fell to the floor?
The weight of feet torn from land,
Land torn from feet;
Of shackles and brands;
Of false emancipation;
Of separate but “equal”;
Of jumpin’ Jim Crow;
Of rope;
Of crosses, burning and imposed;
Of color blind racism;
Of a new apartheid;
Of always being an alien
In a land deemed ones own?

No.
Of course they didn’t feel it,
Even if they knew it,
They’ll never have such weight to bare,
The racial contract has made it so,
And on and on the story goes,
Adding another lesson to the tales,
This 3 white boys
Who cut the young black girl’s hair.

Bred by Love

~ Vanessa, She of Letters ~ Leave a comment

Come so far,
So far to go,
Then legs kicked out,
Again,
From below,
And anger resurfaces,
Pain still fresh,
From a wound that
Will never heal,
And wound on wound
The gaping hurt feels endless,
What can be done
To stop the hate;
The hate that breeds such hate?
My love might seem shallow,
But a little goes a long way,
It’s potent and contagious,
And pain will not make
My love be curdled
By a bitter hate,
Pain is the trauma
But not the ailment,
Pain reminds one can feel,
That this hate is unnecessary
And is missing what I have,
This love breeds love,
Bred by love,
And swallows hate,
Time and time again.