mhelaney_the_writer - Hello Poetry

America was never just great It was flawed first It is practically an accident But better here than India The explorers came, and faster than a cinnamon skinned Arawak Native American woman could yell “the colonialists are coming!” The men in lily-white shirts shoved the unsuspecting indigenous off their land. The explorers were as lost as Louis and Clark without Sacajawea But a determined pedophelic peony planted itself in the deep brown soil The invasive plant started a genocidal streak all over the continent In return it won a couple cities and holiday and the Native Americans were bestowed with accidental exposure to smallpox and enslavement. To repay them we allotted reservations where people live in crippling poverty, put Sacajawea on a coin and Pocahontas in a movie yet we cannot fully allow them into our society, our neighborhoods, our schools because they are uncivilized. The only people who have any business being on this continent are uncivilized. What a shame. America still is not great It still shows scars and old behaviors from the 1400s, 1800s, 60s and even yesterday. The Band-Aid was applied but the wound never washed, never sewn up. So it sets, burgundy bruises and gore gaping at our present, our future. America’s past is far darker than anyone’s skin but is accepted while brown complexions are not. America’s roots are not up for discussion, white supremacy is not real. We are imagining things. We weren’t turned away at white linoleum restaurant counters, we haven’t been isolated from the rest of the country, our sufficiency in the English language hasn’t been questioned, our bodies haven’t been sexualized, politicized It’s all in our heads. Our heads, spinning with fiction, are buried Sinking towards the earth’s core, waiting to come out of the other side where oppression is not pressing down on us like a molten red brick wall. Our brown heads will come up out of the grass and be greeted by the sun and all will welcome us.

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Feb 20, 2019

Feb 20, 2019 at 9:28 PM UTC

mhelaney_the_writer

On America

America was never just great It was flawed first It is practically an accident But better here than India The explorers came, and faster than a cinnamon skinned Arawak Native American woman could yell “the colonialists are coming!” The men in lily-white shirts shoved the unsuspecting indigenous off their land. The explorers were as lost as Louis and Clark without Sacajawea But a determined pedophelic peony planted itself in the deep brown soil The invasive plant started a genocidal streak all over the continent In return it won a couple cities and holiday and the Native Americans were bestowed with accidental exposure to smallpox and enslavement. To repay them we allotted reservations where people live in crippling poverty, put Sacajawea on a coin and Pocahontas in a movie yet we cannot fully allow them into our society, our neighborhoods, our schools because they are uncivilized. The only people who have any business being on this continent are uncivilized. What a shame. America still is not great It still shows scars and old behaviors from the 1400s, 1800s, 60s and even yesterday. The Band-Aid was applied but the wound never washed, never sewn up. So it sets, burgundy bruises and gore gaping at our present, our future. America’s past is far darker than anyone’s skin but is accepted while brown complexions are not. America’s roots are not up for discussion, white supremacy is not real. We are imagining things. We weren’t turned away at white linoleum restaurant counters, we haven’t been isolated from the rest of the country, our sufficiency in the English language hasn’t been questioned, our bodies haven’t been sexualized, politicized It’s all in our heads. Our heads, spinning with fiction, are buried Sinking towards the earth’s core, waiting to come out of the other side where oppression is not pressing down on us like a molten red brick wall. Our brown heads will come up out of the grass and be greeted by the sun and all will welcome us.

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Honor /an inadequacy/ To continue forward despite unimaginable obstacle. When your children don’t have shoes And you’ve left everything else behind When you’re willing to face a new land’s problems in place of your home’s Because you have nowhere else to go.

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Feb 20, 2019

Feb 20, 2019 at 9:25 PM UTC

mhelaney_the_writer

Honor

Honor /an inadequacy/ To continue forward despite unimaginable obstacle. When your children don’t have shoes And you’ve left everything else behind When you’re willing to face a new land’s problems in place of your home’s Because you have nowhere else to go.

6

Everyone says it gets better after middle school but High school isn’t much better In that stage of their lives Everyone cares way too much about other people What they’re wearing What really happened on that school trip Where she’s sitting at prom Why they haven’t broken up yet And college isn’t really better it’s different We’re less concentrated Physically and mentally We’re filled on the inside so there’s no room For other people’s lives The difference in college is that we care less And more About different things I don’t know if that makes us better or worse.

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Feb 20, 2019

Feb 20, 2019 at 9:23 PM UTC

mhelaney_the_writer

Better

Everyone says it gets better after middle school but High school isn’t much better In that stage of their lives Everyone cares way too much about other people What they’re wearing What really happened on that school trip Where she’s sitting at prom Why they haven’t broken up yet And college isn’t really better it’s different We’re less concentrated Physically and mentally We’re filled on the inside so there’s no room For other people’s lives The difference in college is that we care less And more About different things I don’t know if that makes us better or worse.

17

The American people are lotuses Grown out of the murk We’re periwinkle pretty, but we have residue on some of our petals And one could drain the swamp, but we’d still be in it, withering in the harsh sunlight They could select only the fairest lotuses to be preserved, but nature would be disturbed, mutated The indigo birds that drink our nectar would be betrayed Then they too would leave us And leave the aphids without prey In the absence of deep pink flowers nature would start to cave in on itself and white-hot turmoil would fester and procreate So invaluable to us is our gradient of flowers They were meant to be part of our roots, their magentas and mauves keep us balanced Keep us from turning over into the muddy water where sunlight cannot grace our petals.

0

Feb 16, 2019

Feb 16, 2019 at 2:37 PM UTC

mhelaney_the_writer

If America is a Swamp....

The American people are lotuses Grown out of the murk We’re periwinkle pretty, but we have residue on some of our petals And one could drain the swamp, but we’d still be in it, withering in the harsh sunlight They could select only the fairest lotuses to be preserved, but nature would be disturbed, mutated The indigo birds that drink our nectar would be betrayed Then they too would leave us And leave the aphids without prey In the absence of deep pink flowers nature would start to cave in on itself and white-hot turmoil would fester and procreate So invaluable to us is our gradient of flowers They were meant to be part of our roots, their magentas and mauves keep us balanced Keep us from turning over into the muddy water where sunlight cannot grace our petals.

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