AN ANTHEM FOR REMOVAL
Feels like history repeats like a song
Played so loud it can't hear the screams in the blackground.
History was sung to me how General Lee fought brave.
Same history books, left out the slaves he owned and fought to keep.
When I see him, I see me auctioned off like property
or hanging from a tree.
or buried in a shallow grave
on the same land where an entire war takes place over states rights
to own
me.
My skin is still where the real battle takes place.
Before it was a war song for my body to be seen as five-fifths human;
The ability to soak in the sun without crows picking at my flesh and my freedom.
Now, I am still asking to matter; to take up space;
to be solid not sold;
to be fluid not fleeing;
to be whole and not a hole in my chest.
How did my black become so blue and red,
But simultaneously end up a footnote in an election?
or a foot on my neck?
Inside the text of the history books
are silenced screams
Stitched in the spines
trapped in black necks
snapped necks
like branches after a storm.
From Civil War to Civil Rights America implodes
and black and brown bodies suffered the most
And civility is a little-white-lie you tell children in classrooms;
A fairytale turned fact
I am my ancestor’s voice still screeching like black tires
in a long road to feeling free.
Until the sky falls like a confederate soldier
or (finally) a confederate statue
I am holding a raised fist in the smoke,
and an olive branch looking for a hand to hold.
I want peace
I want equality
I want equity
Because my life's value is not dollars.
My life be a priceless joy.
400 years and prayers
and I am still wanting everything any other human being desires:
A place where everyone is given a fair hand and not treated like fair game,
and officers aren't overseers,
and there are no more screams
And the silence
would sound less like a prayer for change
and sound more like peace
after God answers the prayer.
