Sometimes you are the gasoline to an already burnt building
Sometimes you are the anger of a child who broke his own toy
And sometimes you are a fist of rage,
Yelling at the television
A puff of smoke
You are the post apocalyptic chaos of a rip tide too far gone to break
See, racism is not the shark but it's the ocean
All teeth and no mouth,
No jaw and no muscle
Just the white rattle of hate
The sharp grip of an untrained dog
People talk about racism like ancestral land and confederate flags,
Knowing that you own these things,
And we don't
As if we don't own this history too,
This system
Like we're tredding water
How many skin heads do you think were in the room when we signed off on immigration laws,
race legislations,
public school curriculums?
Or pushed policies like mandatory minimum sentencing,
benine neglect,
broken windows,
stop and frisk,
the race war?
Remember,
The eye of the hurricane is the least harmful part of the storm
You,
The eye of the chat room,
All poker face and no cards
So which individual Donald Trump bigot boogie man are we supposed to be mad at?
When do we stop pointing out the bad apples long enough to acknowledge the orchid was planted on a mass grave?
When do we stop slandering race and start slandering unsolicited rage?
Sharks kill about one person each year
Thousands drown
But of course this isn't really a poem for white supremacist
I don't know any white supremacist
But I do know the people in my neighbourhood,
And my family
And I know how white supremacy is upheld
Whether it is through action or inaction
How it isn't just the broken act of justice,
But the justice itself
How a white kid with a black face on Halloween and his friend who knew it was wrong but didn't say anything - start to blur together
Because let's be honest,
Some racists aren't even racist at all
So they say nothing
They're a silent chorus,
A dull underwater humming waiting to overflow
But when the songs of our cities break,
Will we choose to hear it?
Or will we keep looking for the shark,
Keep tredding water,
Not knowing that we're drowning?