Freedom was close to me.  
She never did want me to see.
A pain undone
That nobody could bear to run.
  
I went to a few concentration camps.
There were several big lamps.
They searched in the dark black nights.
They held all my frights.
  
Then came my pebbles.
One was round and marble smooth.
There was no dull for its color shone
I bid farewell to the dullness of life and the dullness of prison.
  
Size was fair in my twisted little game.
Pebble One.                           Pebble Me.
Pebble Two.                           Pebble Brother.
Pebble Three.                        Pebble Mother.
Pebble Four.                          And Pebble Father.
One was found.                     I saved my life.
Two was found.                     Welcome Brother.
Three was found.                  Hello, Mother.
  
Where was Four?
I would bother to save my Father.
There it was.
My hidden rocks.
One, two, three and four.
  
Some say that there is tricky feat called a cheat.
That is not what I am.
To cheat means one is beat.
  
I am not what beat is.
I am what a treat is.
Mother shall have her house.
Brother shall boast in his bed.
I will have all the bread.
Father will have freedom that is not forlorn.
  
The pebbles are what kept us alive.
It is as if we are stuck under a beehive.
One came out to sting.
With that sting it took every single thing.
  
The Russians came after many years.
I would have cried but I had no tears.
My life was fuller.
My soul gained strength.
Marion B.  
Had the strength to know when to flee.

Read the fourth stanza whichever way you want to, one column, two columns, one full stanza, etc.
Freedom was close to me.  
She never did want me to see.
A pain undone
That nobody could bear to run.
  
I went to a few concentration camps.
There were several big lamps.
They searched in the dark black nights.
They held all my frights.
  
Then came my pebbles.
One was round and marble smooth.
There was no dull for its color shone
I bid farewell to the dullness of life and the dullness of prison.
  
Size was fair in my twisted little game.
Pebble One.                           Pebble Me.
Pebble Two.                           Pebble Brother.
Pebble Three.                        Pebble Mother.
Pebble Four.                          And Pebble Father.
One was found.                     I saved my life.
Two was found.                     Welcome Brother.
Three was found.                  Hello, Mother.
  
Where was Four?
I would bother to save my Father.
There it was.
My hidden rocks.
One, two, three and four.
  
Some say that there is tricky feat called a cheat.
That is not what I am.
To cheat means one is beat.
  
I am not what beat is.
I am what a treat is.
Mother shall have her house.
Brother shall boast in his bed.
I will have all the bread.
Father will have freedom that is not forlorn.
  
The pebbles are what kept us alive.
It is as if we are stuck under a beehive.
One came out to sting.
With that sting it took every single thing.
  
The Russians came after many years.
I would have cried but I had no tears.
My life was fuller.
My soul gained strength.
Marion B.

We do not compare to one another.
My skin is the coal the people used. 

Your skin is the powder the flappers adore.
My soul is deep and my heart is pure.
Pure as white!
Your soul is shallow and your heart is dark.
Darker than the skin my people hold.

We may not compare, but you are my brother.
Not by blood
or by class. 

We are fused-

Fused by lives we live and the past we lived 

We are connected forevermore. 


There was a master and he was cruel. 

The crackle of the whip was the electric shock of my greats. There was no hope for the slave that cried.
There was no voice for the slave that remained strong.
Flight was the tantalizing thought.

The slave hadn't a chance to live in flight or freedom.
Their was only the need to fight. 

Fight to live and fight to breathe. 

Those greats so far down kept on fighting. 

They kept on preserving. 

They had their beauty that could never be touched. 



White Man, White Man listen to me. 

I was the coal that was used. 

I was the coal that was taken from its home. 

I was the coal that was discarded and given freedom. 



The flappers are young and they love their powder. 

You will be used and you will become the slave. 

I am the coal that is free. 

You are the powder that is used. 


My beauty will never will fill a white mans body. 

Too much has been seen and too much has been lived. 

No white can hold my strength and no white can hold my beauty. 

They are mine and forever will be.



My soul is deep and my heart is pure.
I shall not be condemned to this life no more.

The third stanza can be read in several ways. It depends on how you read it (as two collums, one full stanza, etc.) Hope you enjoy :)

The headlines would never see Truth.
She is too truthful.
Their lies would never believe her.
She would scream
"Beautiful land taken away."
They would shout
"New zoos opening!"
  
O' humans,
You have stolen me!
I am your beautiful prisoner.
This dark place will never be a home.
My people will dwindle down.
They will become the ice caps on this warming planet.
People will disbelieve all they want until they see the impact
"Too little, too late."
  
Down to the bone my loves will gnaw on what they can.
Mother Earth                             Is the World
Food Supplies                          Gone
Water Supplies                         Down
And Father Sun                         Forever heating up
  
Can everything truly be done
Because people wanted to have fun?
Humans are you so shallow
That you let vanity corrupt untamed lands?
  
I used to be Africa a land of beauty.
Where even the blind man could see me.
I used to be Africa a land of love.
Then you took my people and made them slaves.
I used to be Africa a land of resources.
Then you took what you could
And stole the rest.
  
My sticky molasses was not strong enough to hold me together.
Instead I stuck to more places than could be counted.
The number grew until there was no more to hold.
Coming together became a chore.
I lost little pieces here and there.
They started to grow like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle slowly becoming connected together.
  
Slithering snakes snaked their way up smothering my breath.
Snakes with innocence for faces and trust for eyes.
Soon my land was used.
Minerals and gems taken.
Goodbye darling tanzanite.
Food and animals taken.
Goodbye Quagga.

Impact has come and people now try.
They start to help Mother Earth.
Reducing, reusing and recycling.  
They're efforts die as they see they cannot bear the tide.
They live with a history rooted in fame.
Now it seems their lives cannot be filled more with shame.
They stay under waiting for their blunder
to take its toll.  

They have no misery in what they see.
They do not care about my history.
I start my flame
and light the embers.
I no longer an smothered
The humans are.

This year alone, death has engulfed my soul
like euphoria entraps an addict.
Instead of getting high I'm falling low.
There is pain in my soul and it's not escaping any time soon.
There is a door in my brain that has been locked from the first day I understood somebody I knew died.
Somebody I loved died.
They were gone like a burst of wind we cannot chase, but feel ever so quickly.
It wasn't my grandmother.
Who at age three I loved completely.
By age four there was no more grandmother to help me keep score of life.
She was on the moon for all I knew and now I know better.
From age four to six I didn't question it.
By age seven I forgot, why my grandmother wasn't a forget me not
Why she didn't come back after she disappeared like the flowers do
BUT
I could never forgive and forget.
I could never forgive a God for taking family away from over ten little girls.
10 little girls from age three to age sixty
Mother, Sister, Cousin, Grandma, Friend
I could never forget that grandma = moon.
yet, when I look in the dark sky I find myself full of surprise when I think of her under the glow of a white orb.
Why
I'm not so sure because
the reasons have blurred
Why
I'm not so sure
They say white is the color of purity
It is what you see before death,
And that's what makes it frightening
And it's okay

I was young and every day carved its own way.
Games
Friends
Family
And I guess after one death people think it's the end, but when a man so great came to his fall my heart went down with him
My heart broke
My mouth moved, but soul never spoke.
He may have been the second death that hit me hard, but
He was the true first.
Then another man took the blunder.
Thee weeks in and he fell under under the spell of unlimited sleep
And I cried
For the injustice of leaving five kids young
One thirteen
And one Twelve
One nine
One three
and (another) one (one)
My eyes were waterfalls
Mist
Noise
Gushing water
Yet, what I lacked to acknowledge was within every waterfall there's a rainbow.
The crystals fell creating puddles of salty pins.
They hurt to step on.  
They hurt to think.
They create tiny stab wounds within my heart
Within my brain
Within my faith
They create spaces of emptiness
Spaces of freedom
that i seep from till one day I'll end
Some people say one death is the end.
I say it's the beginning

It burns and it stings.
It hurts.
More than drowning beneath the ice.
More than remaining in a kindled flame
She hits and I no longer cry.
Why mother, why?
  
It burned and it stung.
The markings remained, returned, and were relived
Looking, loving, and little known loathing were the known ways of living.
Never was their pity for the child that cried
Never was their relief for the child that tried
  
You were that lovely bird that understood the complications of felicity
Nothing looked the same in those dewy browns of yours.
My ever beating would cry tears of joy.
The others-they were yet to appear.
Caring Mother, o' so fair
You were that beautiful bird filled with care.
  
The others came and were not alone. Their two suitors sat on the throne.
Rampage and rage why did you come?
I began to wither and wither slumping along. So very soon I-the child of fines- became a human raceme.
The droops of the Lily of the Valley became the slumping of my heart.
My lovely bird the enemy had taken you and the person you were is far from near.
For that divine nature left its intricate self and you became irretrievable my big bird.
All of your fairness died.
With that went my pride.
  
Mother, Mother what moved you so?
Your intense spirit vanished only to supplement a monster.
Mother, Monster and your tar filled lungs.
How did I **** that liver that was so, so strong?
The lesson of pain was one you came to learn.
My darling bird why did you turn?
  
My lovely bird and your big brown eyes
I'll tell you once, but never twice.
Pain is only a flower for it blooms and dies
And a mistake can be killed as quickly as lice.
You dear bird hurt me well. Though, haven't you heard?
Weakness is a souls greatest strength.
You brought me up, then you brought me down.
You have helped, hurt, and hindered my blazing spirit.
A hero in my heart-I left you down in your deep black slumber.
Escaping those terrible nights
To go for the town of delights.

A world without color is one most people cannot see.
It is hidden beneath dreams of us and wishes of maybe.  
It is one that accompanies those wish it away.
And hangs over the shoulders that wish it would stay.  
Color hangs on the roots of hair,  
clouding minds that were once fair.  

Swirling red in a pool.
Heart pumping here  
and stopping there.
Eyes with veins screaming, seeing, needing.
Lines on wrists bleeding, breathing, fleeing.  
Birth bringing banes of bloods being.  
Red runs away in retreat.  

Orange hearts fade in time.
Instinct to thought the brain no longer chimes.
Orange soon obsolete.

Yellow girls and boys
Trying to fix broken toys  
That reside in brains.
Chug chug my train.
Yellow never did compete.


Green grass grows in gardens
And as far as we have known.
Trusting the Earth to give what it has shown.
Has come easily.
Yet flowers watch in spite  
as green grass doesn't give up a fight.
Once pressed down by the cause of man  
Green will rise again.
Green stems cut and killed.
Flowers have never been thrilled.
Green causes conceit.  


There are those that argue of the colors above.  
Some say all exists in this show of lights
But if blue knew
it would scream
The sky is mine.
The clouds are granted access when I please
All other colors visit me
For we are one.
If only blue knew, everything would be concrete


They flaunted their royalty
Wearing a superfluity of luxury  
They denied their disloyalty
Ignoring the fact that responsibility was told
but not heard.
Cruelty will exist in purple.
Yet it will be hidden
Hidden in mystery of being last.
Contorted to the future and past,
When did purple beat?

A world without color is one most people cannot see.
Still, it manages to be one we believe.

As a child I had come to the belief
That the color black
had no friends.  
Starring at my ceiling in the night,
I would fight,
trying to find the hues of blue, red and green.
Trying as if I were flying without wings  
And all I could think was black is mean.  
Other colors run away  
Because black has no day.
It is the unknown
the future
the past
It is the person that finishes last
-the supposed worst
It is the person that finishes first
-the one that can never quite quench their thirst
It is hatred.
It is love
It is difference
It is normalcy

Black is the friend you are always with.
The moth attracting a flame.  
Hiding from the rain because water washes things away
Our troubles
Fears
Joys  
and Bliss
Who would we be if it were not for everything?  

Black is the absorbtion of all colors  
Instead of being none
It is one

Black is everything I never could be
It hides the flaws I never wish to see.
Black is anything, but me.  

Black is the end of the spectrum we'll never know.
Black is the color with not much to show.

Have I not given you
The fruit of this bless-it tree?

Have I not shown you
That love comes in the form of we?

Have I not seen you
in the brightest days when everything was haze?

Have we not given
Chapters in life?

Have we not shown
that there is more to strife?

Have we not seen
Past our eyes into our disguise of skin?

When did I reliaize I didn't win?

Sing those loving melodies.
Lull me back to sleep.
Where sweet dreams will kiss my brain  
and their rhythm will rock with the rain.
Rain-
a deadly drizzle that determines death
Drown the plants  
Ruin the worms
Watch as the fire burns
Fire-  
Life in the disguise of death.
Take an old forest and bring a new breath.  
Ashen smoke will swirl till black is only known.
Black-  
The color of shadows.
Hide me now
For Flaws cling onto this skin as if there is no other way to feed
Flaws-
Different we all may be,
but one perception of beauty has turned against me
Me-
Loving a house that I could not choose.  
Watching as innocence fades from loving eyes.
Turned by society.
Everything but clarity surrounds me.
Too fat
Too slim
Too tall  
Too you
If I cannot embrace my insecurities
How can I be me?  
Society-
The voice with no greater sound than its impact
Whispers of rumors down the hall
A life of misery.  
Miserable-  
the one emotion that is constant  
No happy thought will push it away.
No rush of anger will make it sway.
No tears of sadness will wash its stains
It stays
My closest friend.
Whispering truths of my life.
"End it dear, strife is temporary."
Oh how it is dear misery.  
Had I not given you my time,  
perhaps my clock would still chime.  
It is no wonder that life is mystery (and mystery surrounds life.)