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ranveer joshua Dec 2023
A resonant gratitude streams through my veins,
Consecrated to my middle school heroines, deflecting
The whispers of shame.
But they taught me that I do not have the luxury of shame;
I have a voice, and I must amplify it––that’s what my mother said.

Elles m’ont protégée, blossoming my oneness.
I am here now because of them, I harness their divine feminine
Strength.

Standing on the bones of my aunties, their anguish travels up,
Their histories following suit.
Beneath my feet, to my knuckles; charging my inner being
My spine is rigid, fortified with the duty––
To liberate, to reform, and to love.
“But my love,” she tells me earnestly, “this love, has been assumed,
Taken for granted, blended into the background of the White man’s portrait.”

My dun skin lives in the ambiguity of praise and prejudice,
And my sisters are dead. Exploited, first––then dead.
As were my mother’s grandmothers, when the Britons drew the line.
The assembly line, however, was an American invention––
Where the American Dream came to fruition. Commodified neatly,
‘Cheaply’ produced, and easy to swallow: fine [Black*] American craftmanship!

Her tomb
Stone, will be mined by her brothers.
He is unearthing the buried history, but forced to push coal into the fire,
Cremating the legacies of his own kin.

“So what are you going to say at my funeral now that you’ve killed me?”
Her lasts words, found amongst the ashes.
racial capitalism, intertwined with colonial and imperial histories.
WGS373H1
Bugs Spencer Nov 2023
Wake up and I swallow
Instagram reels and dry pills
to help feel less hollow

Bite into tender flesh
sip on my blood coffee
their pain is still so fresh

New phone every new year
six marketable colors
screams fall on a deaf ear

My hair begins, thins out
checking all the labels
ingredients I do doubt

All we do is consume
no matter what the cost
dead families, no tomb

Wake up and listen in
They don't care about us
Money hungry eat skin
Ghxstcxt Jul 2023
All talk no action
Accountability
not even a fraction
Surmount humility
Profound inaction
Abound rigidity
Tall walk short stature
The American way
Work force pays for the
CEOs big payday
Do as I say
Not do as I do
Under the guise of
"we want to improve"
It's so easy to see
their ego's fragility
with the words they use
Zywa May 2023
The gum bubble bursts,

people scream about profit


motives: blue ******!
"Trois couleurs: Rouge" - Fraternité ("Three Colours: Red" - Fraternity, 1993, Krzysztof Kieślowski), Valentine

Collection "Mastress"
Zywa May 2023
The Great Leader shouts:

We Are Great, The World Is Ours!


Who offers the most?
Collection "Different times"
yann Jan 2023
Proper lines at their proper place,
And in perfect time if you could,
Please, that would be great.
Rightful colors at their rightful place,
And in record time, if you
Sped up just a little, just a little.

I seem to have noticed your arms look slugghish,
Maybe you should add a bit of cafeine to your coffe.
I think we should get someone else,
Your dead eyed stare
Might start to affect morale 'round here,
Maybe you could go home a little earlier,
Without cutting at your hours.

Have you tried being glad for the opportunity ?
Have you tried being happy for the food on your table ?
What do you mean you wish for more ?

Meaning isn't part of your work, you know,

Proper Lines, and Rightful Colors, with
a Smile on your Face, a Bright, Happy, fried Coworker.

(we do want you quieter)
10.12.22 - being a machine
lj brooks Dec 2022
i don’t want life to be easy,
but i wish it were simple
i don’t want to pick flowers
to die in a vase on the table

it’s too late to retreat
it’s too late to begin
it’s too late to start over
i’m too broke to give in

i want it all or none
spend my days in a class or the sun
either a mansion or shack on a hill
if i could put in the effort, complete overkill

but they don’t want me to belong to the land
(only if i put a dollar in their hand)
so i am a little bit lost
a little bit lazy at a pretty large cost
and i want to know things but not out of need
fulfill my own longing, a curious greed

it’s too late to go back
it’s too early to die
it’s too late to start over
it’s no use asking why
can i only have just one?
rich exhaustion or penniless fun
i’m sure that some can,
but that someone’s not me
unless there’s something that no one can see

i’m digging for treasure
i’m not sure is there
maybe i’ll find it…
if i just change my hair
when i wrote this, i was hoping that a melody would come to me and it could be a song, if that explains the awkward rhythm (or lack thereof). still haven’t been able to think of a melody :/
Separated by progress
We live in isolation
Socially stagnated
Growing ever distant.

Focus further inward
Without hesitation,
Cutting off future conflicts
Before they even happen.

Perspective and reality
No longer separate
Eco chamber catalysts
Shattered-faction fragment.

Elitist tactics brainwash
Entire populations,
Localised abundance withers
With dying vegetation.

Doomsday clocks lurching
Our salvation diverges
Shouting to the twilight sun
We share but false elation.

Entire regions' designated
Means of production
No new doctrines allowed
All hail consumption.

Ever directionless, at a loss
Regressing into violence:
Revolutionaries' proudest
Of our failed revolutions.

Living out our dreams
Of solitary bliss,
Live alone in harmony
Or die in the abyss.

What piece of work is man
That chooses inhumanity
A species in a chasm
Led by mere savages.
"And in time there will come a generation that has got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation seraphically free from taint of personality"
― E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops
Filomena May 2022
A tasty pastry baked by pain
Is made with bakers' stolen grain
But maids and butlers go insane
To take the tasty, not the plain
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