Sixteen letters
Two words
Is it
Too much to ask
of a people
That colonized worlds
And destroyed civilizations?

Let it slither
On your tongue
Let it glide
Down your throat
Until it rests
Close to your heart

Breathe it in
Until it dissolves
Into the crimson
That runs in your veins
And flows
Beneath your skull
Into your mind

For too long
I’ve cowered
Inside a cave of nicknames
And excuses

If you can pronounce
Daenerys Targaryen
You can say
My name

America was never just great
It was flawed first
It is practically an accident
But better here than India
The explorers came, and faster than a cinnamon skinned Arawak Native American woman could yell “the colonialists are coming!” The men in lily-white shirts shoved the unsuspecting indigenous off their land.

The explorers were as lost as Louis and Clark without Sacajawea
But a determined pedophelic peony planted itself in the deep brown soil
The invasive plant started a genocidal streak all over the continent
In return it won a couple cities and holiday and the Native Americans were bestowed with accidental exposure to smallpox and enslavement.  

To repay them we allotted reservations where people live in crippling poverty, put Sacajawea on a coin and Pocahontas in a movie yet we cannot fully allow them into our society, our neighborhoods, our schools because they are uncivilized.

The only people who have any business being on this continent are uncivilized. What a shame.

America still is not great
It still shows scars and old behaviors from the 1400s, 1800s, 60s and even yesterday. The Band-Aid was applied but the wound never washed, never sewn up.
So it sets, burgundy bruises and gore gaping at our present, our future.
America’s past is far darker than anyone’s skin but is accepted while brown complexions are not. America’s roots are not up for discussion, white supremacy is not real.

We are imagining things.

We weren’t turned away at white linoleum restaurant counters, we haven’t been isolated from the rest of the country, our sufficiency in the English language hasn’t been questioned, our bodies haven’t been sexualized, politicized
It’s all in our heads.

Our heads, spinning with fiction, are buried
Sinking towards the earth’s core, waiting to come out of the other side where oppression is not pressing down on us like a molten red brick wall. Our brown heads will come up out of the grass and be greeted by the sun and all will welcome us.

Indigenous knowledge and unwritten tradition
Ritual dances and pagan gods
She speaks to the deads
Heals the deepest wound
Whispers to the reindeers

But one day people with skins, the colour of snow, came
Untouched by her wisdom
Nothing she could do to stop them
The land was soiled
Purity went away

suffering Clots in my gut
humanity gurgles In my throat
holes drilled into the Veins of the earth
as i taste a country drenched in colonIzed blood on my Lips
a melting arctIc leaks from my eyes
weStern destinies fester in my chest
as the fissures in its surface smoke my lungs out like burning gAsoline
i can Touch each pole with the pads of my fingers
and shake the glassy world
one day i will lay flat and press my tongue agaInst the world
and feel it dissOlve in my mouth
like the fizzy tablet of Nothing it is

i used to think that driving
in developing countries
was just a series of close calls
but it is this unstructured discipline
and a firm commitment to disorder
that enchanted those
to come
read: conquer
and build institutions
hell bent on
extracting the soul
with a scalpel
and replacing customs
with consumption

I remember you as the missionary that turned my body into a piece of land
That night you crossed an ocean of friendliness to claim as your own.
But this land was already inhabited by the likes of me, a native to my body
And you, a foreign body that I could not wash clean.
I showered five times that night, but you had already implanted a plague
Of confusion and hate within me.

You took my smile aprisoner, never to be seen again
Until we passed each other on campus four months later.
You flaunted your smirk as if you got a flashback too
But unlike mine it was a happy one.
Not like the ones I have had at least once a week for the last year,
Where I'm back to the night of the invasion
And end up shaking in fear.

I had known you for no less than ten months,
Always saw you at house parties and in night clubs with our mutual friends -
Don't you think it's weird that we used to be friends?
You know when I shared that taxi back with you I expected you to get me home safely,
Leave me at the door and in the morning I'd text you to make sure you got home okay,
Moan about our headaches and compare hangover cures.

I did not expect you to ask to come in but I allowed it.
A glass of water for your way and to use my bathroom because
Being ****** and needing a **** at the same time is hard
But that's where my consent ended,
Rejected your ****** advances, pleaded for you to leave
And you had the audacity to say that I didn't mean it.
Like I wouldn't know what the words leaving my mouth meant,
Like I didn't spend the last nineteen years of my life learning about consent
And the dangers of the female body.

When you hear about **** it's always in dark alleyways,
Strangers pouncing on weaker prey - that sick, lonely, *******,
And never the friend that you took shots with.
Never the guy that's the life of the party.
Never the guy that works for your university.

Over the last year I have cried an ocean, big enough to stop another man from crossing.
I'm working on my liberation, fighting for my independence from this nightmare.
I know you conquered other friends too, but I refuse to be another colony in your empire -
Another person to be victimised,
Because it's YOU, Missionary, that needs to be civilised.

The tale was told of a place enveloped by insanity
of those who ventured the depths to find ivory
but discovered the zenith of seclusion
and enslaved by the epitome of delusion

It was a tale of the pilgrims from Europe
but pilgrims they were not
for only the materialistic they sought
they were poor of heart

The tale spoke of great wealth
but the strange tropical illness
had only impaired men's health
proving the expedition to be fruitless

The tale spoke of those who tamed the wild*
but those who returned
saw no face of glory
the darkness is most definitely not friendly