It's been more than a hundred years now
Since I started coming home and ****** you
When I first started, you used to look like yourself
Now you're a mix of me and you
Do you even resemble yourself anymore?
Do you still look in the mirror anymore?
Do you see yourself in you still?
I, the ******* man in this relationship
Won you as a prize. You're a token.
I've put you through all this ****
And as a result, you're just broken
You're not ******* on the **** like a child
You were given to me when you were weak and wild
Weak and mild, you never got a chance to thrive by yourself
See, I wasn't the first man to ******* over
Look at that history, baby
Look at that long line of Spaniard influence
I've felt you up,
Walked your mountains,
Seen your castles,
Traversed your beaches,
Been shown your Capitol,
And I don't weep for those Tainos
I saw pictures of them on your walls;
What's that about? Do you still love them?
You better not show your love to anyone else, you hear?
Are you here? Are you listening? Well, listen up.
I said: You shall have no lovers before me, you hear?
See, I'm a jealous god. I rule you, you understand?
Or should I say, tu entiendes? Is that better?
You get me now? You feel me now?
Well I haven't stopped feeling you.
In fact, I'm sending over my colleagues
To feel you too
Here,
Have my big pharma
Have my baggage
Have my tourists
Have my people
Have my taxes
Have no representation
Have none of the benefits
Ten decepcion
Ay, si, que decepcion
Look at yourself. Do you even speak Spanish anymore?
Do you still remember how to?
Come on, just forget about that.
I can't speak it, and you know it's disrespectful
To speak it in front of people who can't
So just don't
Matter fact, all I'ma allow you to do is sit there
And take it
Take it like the ***** I made you into
Take it like I've conditioned you to
Take it and don't argue with me
Take it, or I'll toss you to the sea
You don't wanna drift off, now, do you?
You see, come June, you'll have to choose
Now what exactly are you gonna do?
I never stop pondering it, too
Like what will happen when you tell me you want to break up?
You think I'm gonna take it? You've got it backwards:
You take it in this relationship--not me
And what happens if you wanna be respected?
Do you really expect it
To force me to give you back everything I stole from you?
Well, I cannot say I know what will happen either
But be realistic: don't expect me to stop hurting you
It's what I do
I visited Puerto Rico once to figure out how the people there wanted things to be and whether or not they were satisfied with how things were right now. I got a lot of mixed answers, but this poem is basically my synthesis of those findings and my observations on that trip.
note: the narrator is America. This metaphor of husband and wife, abuser and abused, is borrowed from a poet called Propaganda, who used it to describe the relationship between America and black people.