It's hard to look,
It's hard to see.
The great pain in my history,
The conflicts within my ancestry.
My past encompasses centuries
and while some did and do,
I've been taught and I've chosen not to flee.
I accept the weight with many tears
and no broken backs.
For it is a great part of the strength that I have.
From across the sea, to the ships of warped wood and mast.
From the stages with spotlights of sunshine and blue eyes
To the places of of the merciless mans leather whip crack.
From the war for our bodies, to the war for our rights.
From the war for our culture to the war for our minds.
The war to take our knowledge, and disgrace our lives.
These things could I ever deny?
To sacrifice for to unborn children, an agape love truly.
Blemished and distorted history that it is.
Made a fantasy trip by those that write the books
from which we teach,
Ours must remain, still, an oral history.
And should I break away, I lose what I am,
and the strength given by those before me;
those strong founding African Americans
Who, for their descendants, stood on their feet.
Never to surrender spiritually.
I look not over the sea for my forefathers.
No, I began with the survivors
who refused to be beat.
From the slave to the free man.
From the mixed child to to *****.
From the hard worker, the soldier, the enlightened,
to the one's that made it to and through college.
To the one's who endured the racist and the hatred.
It may be hard to look, to see,
but it's because of these
That I can look
I can see.
I am.
And I can be.