Araminta Speaks

She is not so pretty...
Her face is gnarled and weathered 
Cracked and wizened and not so womanly
She sits there, though, a beautiful angel in white

I don't see it, but I know it's there -
A scar on her head from being beaten senselessly 
An ironic damage to her brain
That made her insanely dare to be free

She is pitch dark with piercing eyes
That mirror the consequence of Black servitude and White privilege
She has become the raft of Mahayana 
The Northern Star that walks the Earth

She is the mother we don't honor well
With trivial talk of paper currency
It behooves us to consider the vice versa - 
And say instead that Moses was the Jewish her

Because she is who led her devotees to nirvana 
To sit in the shade of Allah's throne
She is who fought her country's prurience with patriotism 
All for the audacity called freedom

And she will die 
But still not be done,
Reaching across the century 
Speaking to her children like me
Who have decided to stand and be free

I hear the dogs a-coming
But her voice is louder than theirs
Her whisper is a roar

And I can see her in white 
Through the trees...

...She still is not so pretty - yet -
She is the most beautiful of things
And what she whispers I will marry my heart to

Her roar  - it is just two (loud) words
That permanently reverberate through my ventricles:

Keep...
    Going...


 © Taj Ashaheed