Hate Being Right

2016:

Pattern recognition,

Look, look! I said,

I saw the signs.

I know my histories, 

Histories that pump with both guilt, and defiant survival in my mulatto veins

Histories of Europe, of Africa, of brave new worlds of US,

Of capitalism and conquest,

Doctrine of discovery

Of colonization,

And enslavement,

And subjugation, 

And decimation,

Of erasure,

Of cruelty of the most egregious kind, 

The kind too sick to even imagine.

Only, I asked you to imagine it, 

to 

connect 

the 

dots,

To try to

Stop it!

–But I 

was “crazy”,

But I 

was “unwell”

…2026:

But I saw true,

Just maybe it took a little 

longer 

than foretold, 

But, here we are.

Distraught and livid,

 I’m still in it,

Just changed, 

Still trying to plan how to just be;

Survive,

And to help pull us, 

minister us through hell. 

I knew too much, 

Too soon,

Ahead of the times.

But, maybe for once the historians, the oracles, the crazies just needed the mic in the room,

To have kept us from this present doom.

And now the black truck wagons I saw circle,

In this Apocalypse of our own making,

it burns my tongue not to mention it,

And I don’t

(It is of no use now)

There’s No satisfaction in this “I told you so”

But, God damnit, 

I hate having been right.

Self-fulfilling Prophecies

My favorite songs
Are my self-fulfilling prophecies:
I like him,
He likes me,
But we’ve got baggage,
And he’s got a “her”,
Again;
Incompatibility
From the start
But damn it was love and passion
And heart,
It wasn’t a lie
Until we both turned,
Claiming “too hard to try” anymore,
Your fault,
My fault,
Confused;
Tears and anger coincide
I want to hate you,
Want to have you
want to love you,
To again collide;
But they say it’s too late,
Too much said and done,
Both burned
too many times

Woke

We’re all awake now,
The veil has been lifted,
It’s time to choose sides
Of history,
This is when out legacy is written,
By when we choose to speak,
And what we choose to say,
Or whose life we will lay down for,
Or if we’ll look at this
As just another day.

Hometown

Familiar buildings
I’ve never seen the insides of,
Sky scraped,
Smoke stacked,
Green bridge stretched out,
Connecting lands manmade,
Autumn gold filigree along city streets,
Red brick pavement under
History we breathe
History we bare, with every beat.

Reparations

We don’t belong here,
Most of us,
All of us,
We are squatters,
Claimants to possessions,
To lives, to land,
To stories that are not ours,
That are not meant to be owned,
And still we are a legacy,
Of conquerors,
Thefting still,
Without acknowledgement,
Often without knowledge,
Of the very sins we are committing,
This is our history,
Our story,
The ending is never written,
It is living by our means
And I wish to live love
And reparations into this Act.