Masks, hoods
are off,
The lashings are linguistic,
Yet none less painful,
POCs nurse their wounds,
Tend their wounded,
And prepare for next moves,
Preparing for the inevitable
next attacks
Tag: Racism
Home
We are the meld
Of the melting pot
That they fear,
The unification of contradictions,
That makes it possible to think,
And not be compelled to remain within party lines,
We are the ones they fear,
They know they cannot control,
Because we know the story,
Know the game,
Know the values,
And are ready to play,
We are the ones told to “go back” from whence we came,
For attempting to be in,
and to fix a broken system,
And know there is silence when our less pigmented brethren do the same,
I am at once proud and ashamed,
And trying my best to be colored beneath a Star spangled banner,
A country that was never designed for me,
Or you, or you,
The oligarchy keeps the barriers in place,
And erects new ones,
Barbed wire fences,
To keep masses divided,
I am not your enemy,
Though I will be villainized for speaking my truth,
For not averting my eyes,
My identity will be used when convenient,
To make a xenophobic point,
Or alternatively for one to save face and prove they are not
Racist,
They fear not just vengeance for centuries of Injustice,
But passing, successes, rewritten social castes,
They fear reality,
That we have no place else to go,
Because this is,
as much for us,
as it is for them,
Home.
“We Are All the Same”
We want to say
“We are all the same,”
And believe it with our core,
It’s the message we were taught from cut and pasted MLK,
We don’t see the whole picture
If we close our eyes and assert the truth of our sameness,
But are we all the same?
Not in experience,
I cannot say I’ve lived a day in your shoes,
To appreciate how life is as you,
Human, sentient, even then variation makes our experiences
Different,
Location, soci political climate,
Characteristics that dictate our place in it,
Social qualifiers that mark our skin, our minds, our bodies, our heritage,
And the histories behind them,
Must not be glossed over,
It must be worked through,
Recognized,
To see the truth beneath,
And the real meaning meant
Of “we are all the same”.
Privileges
Some can say
“I don’t
Want to
hear it,
See it,
be reminded,
Think about things outside
Of my control”,
“I am comfortable here”,
In ignorant complacency,
Not thinking from another’s point of view,
“This is my space”,
Of chosen apathy,
“I can sugar coat,
Pick and choose
what I subject my mind to”,
Some can forget,
Can remain ignorant,
Can be the fish that swim
Never aware that there is water,
That is their privilege at play,
But I cannot
Remain blind,
My multiple identities remind me every day,
And being aware is my burden,
And I know
I have privileges too,
But I count being awake
As one of them
Wake
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.
She of Letters 