"What do we do with all these Free people?"
We share-crop them,
Keep them away from Sally,
And invite them to pack their carpet bags and
Move to Panama.
If they inexplicably stay,
Terrorize them with pillow cases with eyes cut out,
We'll keep them come from voting by making them spell their name,
We'll outline their neighborhoods with red markers ,
And let them learn from books with no glue in them
We'll use bull horns ,
Dobermans, three strikes, and plane loads of freebase,
360 deals and spinner wheels,
Take the chains from their ankles, and put them around their necks
Usher them (back) onto cruise trips ,
That boomerang back to penitentiaries named after African nations,
We fool them with our version of what Jesus would do,
Stop them from learning multi-syllabic words,
By teaching them acronyms like NBA NFL and DEI,
We'll make "nigger" a limerick
Lube them up with baby oil
So that they slide like oil slicks into indictments and fentanyl funerals.
We let their dreams dry up like split lips in winter,
Cracked and bleeding promises—
Or we set them to boil in the kettle of ambition,
Until they explode in protest and prayer.
Then we build museums,
To remember what we made them forget.
We line their windows with black tape and blue lights,
Name their children after hurricanes and hope,
Fund murals not mortgages,
And teach them to dribble better than they speak.
We'll scrub history
Until it’s squeaky cleanwith omission,
Make amnesia an institution,
And call it "curriculum".
We bleach their heroes with Hollywood smiles,
Press their tongues between branding irons
That hiss freedom in lowercase.
We hand them microphones,
But wire them to detonators.
We bottle their culture like perfume,
Spray it on suburbia,
Then throw the bottle back
Right upside their heads.
And when they march,
We let the cameras roll,
But not the reforms.
Until, finally—
we file away the last census card,
Mark the checkbox "extinct,"
And sigh relief into the ashes of jazz.
But it don’t end.
No, it don’t end.
We rinse with riot,
Repeat with silence.
Polish the lie until it gleams like justice.
Then run the cycle back—
until even the dream deferred forgets
what it was dreaming for..
#NationalPoetryMonth
