I am sometimes stunned
By the blind privilege
Of the most well meaning,
I will cry for you that you have been wronged,
But I will not do myself and others literal harm,
To make your unease go away,
I will not do so simply because you weep,
For here I am weeping because of your attack,
You are privileged from where you cry,
But you expect me give away more,
Because you speak,
Your platform is your privilege,
Your class, your skin, your gender, your orientation,
And you say this is your first time
Feeling oppressed,
As you maintain your right to do the very thing,
Of which you do complain.
Tag: Oppression
Leaving Master’s House
All my self doubt,
Desire to prove
My worth
Was always part of the plan,
To drive me deep into the invisible Master’s hand,
That I should feel an ache of need
Where it need not be.
But from youth
I questioned,
Reverse engineered,
Dismantled my world to try to see,
What others might find to be wrong with me,
And I backed myself into the corner,
To the planned “tragic” position,
But this time I was not alone,
In the corner I found,
“Human”,
“sentient”,
“living”,
“Organic”,
And I put a mirror up to self and surroundings,
To see the thick of oppression,
We are swimming in the deep end of,
The oppression that from birth guilts the innocent
Into assimilation,
Without their knowledge or consent;
I am in the same colonial waste as my siblings,
with differing side effects from the toxins,
My color, my pedigree, my gender, disability, sexuality
are all just ways to peg me,
But how I view them does change the game,
I have my own damn tools,
And I am leaving master’s house.
Tear Gas Tears
Tears streaming
they Run,
Eyes stinging
they run,
Lungs burning
they run,
Anywhere
They Run
Run,
Away from oppression,
Away from persecution
Rush,
Into the loving arms
Of persecution,
Oppression,
Prosecution,
Imprisonment
Anything is better
Right?
America is freedom
Right?
Right?
What have we become?
Or have we always been?
What are we yet to become?
Manifest destiny
And no sympathies,
as wildfires burn
We celebrate with bloody trees,
We plow the Earth with “democracy”,
By upholding elsewhere
Tyrannical puppetry
What have we become?
Tear gasing the babies,
Just usually nimby* [not in my back yard]
And the cult of red hats bob in support
Is this being “great”?
Playing of all the worst moves “again”,
With scientific advances
Gerrymandered borders
Blur nationalist lines,
Never mind what’s behind the curtain
Right?
What worse could come? Right?
At least it’s not…
Like back then;
Like over there;
Like them;
At least it’s not
Me.
Right?
Rio dos Camarões
My family,
They are shrimp,
In a draining stream,
Being made ghosts,
Like their ancestors;
In a homeland
Intruders named
Rio dos Camarões
7/30/2018
In the Trees
I have family
In Africa,
In Cameroon.
Family,
Whom I will likely
Never meet,
With histories I may never learn.
Most likely to be erased
by active deletion and plunder,
replaced with rubble and shells, and unrecognizable human lives,
No,
My family,
They do not live in trees.
Post-colonial,
Christianized,
Westernized –“Civilized”,
And they simultaneously have lost, honor and shun their pre-colonial heritage,
And they speak English;
And Meta,
and Cameroonian pidgeon (some do),
And many other native tongues,
Mais, un grand nombres d’entre eux ne comprennent le francais (“But a large number do not understand French”),
In a country
C’est effaser l’angophone (“That is erasing engish speaking/ the english speaker”) .
And they are hiding,
In the jungle,
For their lives
Colonialism,
In different pigments,
Different uniforms,
Different flags,
But never dead,
Again rears its head,
Fled from their homes,
Their villages,
Their farms,
their fields,
Their land
Living now
as refugees,
Hiding behind,
between,
And in
the trees.
But not Ne Julie,
My aunt,
Whom I will never meet,
She says
She will stay
She is diabetic,
She is too old,
Too fragile,
To run,
To keep up,
to survive,
among the trees.
7/30/2018
She of Letters 