Was your child born to hate mine?
We keep living in the past
Why plant it in a new garden
Will it be the same as the last?

Our mistakes must be paid
We have given them the bill
But let their hearts be debt-free
Because hatred can only ****

Don't run away from me
Don't assume I am the same
I want to know your heart
Will you only point at me in blame?

If you must tell me so
Then I will turn the other cheek
I am only human my friend
I am not the perfection you seek

I’m not from that part of the world
But I know a few things about them
They love their children
They mourn their dead
Isn’t that enough to know them well?

His mother’s spirit rose through the box and soil
It once provided shelter and their annual harvest
Every child knows this
Because from where they come
The world is never lied about, only endured

They know no politics, but long for justice
Still a violin sounds sweet as their mother
And they know how to dance
Lightness all around their feet
The air is not as cruel as a man can be

To be common is not a poor man’s burden
To speak the truth plainly is his gift
But he is also high-minded
He has no fear of society
And though he is a slave his mind is not

How many generations must suffer purification
To become a people they must first bleed together
They are the chosen people
The ones their tormentors will curse
Because the past will remind them of who they are

But how will we come learn of our tangled roots
We bury ourselves but fail to see what we share
The soil upon which we walk
Is for life and for death
But what God can raise a man can only bury

Today, we marched, or rather, I watched him,
my friend, next to me dream. Of what futures, I'm not
quite aware. Some orange man has overtook
the american government everyone in their right mind
and heart
cried,
and a square in Boston was filled with lively
dreamers
with placards and gleaming eyes and faces
that said no! not again! A few toddlers
sauntered around the feet of their parents
saying and shouting and muttering and playing
with words and slogans they don't understand
yet in their minds,
maybe their hearts,
in them they know. Next to me my friend grabbed
an abandoned placard and I felt lost. I only
came to watch how the words of the orange man
came alight. I was afraid we would catch flame.
A grey-haired woman had earlier skipped across
the crowd in front of us to show us a different route and
told us useful things- we were fresh I had explained-
and we carefully avoided police but there weren't many.
It was cold. Not the orange man. Somehow we
met my friend's friends and we started a chant
in the crowd below us, perched atop a crumbling
history of a church. Pictures were taken. Instagram.
We dabbed to the beat of Hindu chanting and tambourines.
Muslims prayed towards Mecca beneath Christian statues.
Amazed. I felt a certain emptiness.
Then my friend joked,
'I'll make a social justice warrior out of you too!'
Why am I not angry? The orange man is wrong.
A fool, a jester. Yet our testicles are in his hands.
Sometimes, rarely, I feel a meager sad frightening pressure
between my legs. Some have already been castrated
in confused airports. Accidents of birth have left them
stranded in a great barren womb of this world. What
is a state? A foreign policy? Man? Woman? Child?
How much time do I have left to ***? On whose
face can I do it on? Is the orange man aiming for
mine? Ours? The veiled woman? Is the immigration
counter camera pornographic? What awkward things
to do with one's time. One's body. One's mind.
One's heart.
I am ashamed.
Instead of working, I am thinking. I am lazy.
I spend scholarship money in restaurants
away from the college dining hall so that the noise
around me will be something I cannot recognize.
Still both are the same bubbles of safety. Different
stages of cocooning is all. I am a caterpillar surrounded
by butterflies eating steak and salmon. I am ugly. So ugly.
Nothing beautiful at all.

She lives in me
a genetic relic
fearsome goddess
strands of vengeance
gifted from the Erinyes
after all these years
trying to disown her
maybe it’s time
to wear her
on the outside
as armor

♛   ♛   ♛

Martin Luther, righteous King,
made the Reformation sing.
Popes and peasants, out of key
turned it into misery.
German beer and Roman crimes
made for most uncivil times
much like our own. We must confess
rights and wrongs we yet possess...

Half a millennium later on
a Baptist pastor and his son
took this noble Saxon name
and furthered the Reformer's fame.
Some revisionists deny
St. Martin Luther's role, and try
to minimize theology
in civil rights chronology.
The second Luther of my song
inspired—but did not last as long.
Social Justice notwithstanding,
King's successors need re-branding.
Politicians steal his mantle,
cloak their lies in his example;
agitators claim his glory
pushing God out of the story;
educators sing his praises
but some people's conduct raises
doubts about that dream of King—
and hope... and change...  and everything.

Atlas shrugged his shoulders and said his last goodbye
He said I’m tired of this world and all of you know why
Before he left he let the singing caged bird out to fly
She said I begged you to release me before I die

The world once was green but forgot how to create  
The sun’s early morning make the moon tides too late
He purified himself first so he could turn from his hate
Now he’s gone leaving behind the anger of our fate

She only knew how to paint the colors of her reality
It made her life easier because it was her normality
They begged her to come back but she did not feel free
She’d rather sell tortillas than cross the pretentious sea

Release the favor of your desires for I have none to offer
I exist where the light has exhausted itself from its search
We only live underneath its glow and not by its promise
And I walk alone by the door of a once beckoning church

In his hands he may choose his wraths or his mercies
A terrible sword of dust swirling without remorse
The light of a rainbow without sound or footprint
We choose either the gentle or sharp side of its source

Where men gather arguing over the virtues of sin
There is no trail to follow except the way of failure
For there is no just end without a just path for peace
And the burden he bore knows who was his savior

A dream with two sides
One of peace one of death
Carrying the bones of main street
Washed by the baptism of oppression
But somehow it doesn’t seem real
Because it didn’t happen to  you

A place with no mercy
Even shame awaits permission to speak
Where prayers vanish in disbelief
They are trying to take you there
To suspend your faith in mankind
Is to find one unwilling to agree with you

The work has come undone
The pages are no longer full of wonder
To speak of history is to pretend to agree
Once again those in the middle cannot hide
And to walk on which side of the bullet
Is the choice that now confronts you

You are
   a gift to these times
With the dignity
   of a survivor
And the sadness
   of those bearing a loss
Inside you the hope
   for a happy moment
While you carry
   the message forward
Always remembering
    to live as grace does
Not making enemies
   of those who fear you
For they know
   your wrath is justified
But not to your
   heart which wants to love
That is who you are
   if only they will let you

My family called me a demon
That my love is just a phase
They don't know what I'm feeling
And if they pray it'll go away

I'm a boy trapped in a woman
You're a woman trapped in a boy
When we cry every night til morning
They'll just call us paranoid

I will die someone other than myself
If I can't live the way I need to
I'm not a demon praying on someone else
I'm just a human-being like you

Someone fell in love with me on Sunday
And I fell in love with them too
We decided to get married on Monday
We're chasing dreams, old and brand new

Then one night, we opened the window
To see pitchforks and torches set afire
The pain is deep but little do they know
A few drops of rain can never put out desire

Hey there,
I am me. Me am I.
A black beauty am I.
The sun smiled at my body and turned my skin into its own little chocolate factory.
Several shades of a dazzling dark complexion.
A black beauty am me.
As I walk, the view of my curves captivates the attention of all those looking on.
Wow they say, **** isn't she fine.
A black beauty am I.
People often underestimate my potential but they don't know that there's more to me than meets the eye.
My intelligence allows my voice to be heard because I excel at everything I do.
A black beauty am me.
A warrior, a fighter, a lover and a friend. I am a black beauty who believes in the power of sisterhood
to uplift rather than tear down;
to encourage rather than discourage;
to dream rather than to fight.
Not only am I beautifully black but I am me and me am I...Black beauty....