It lies in my skin,
It makes me who I am,
It makes me beautiful,
You saw and see me as lesser,
You look down at me with displeasure,
My big lips and *** were seen as ugly,
Now seen as a trend broadly,
My natural beauty has fallen in the category of fake,
My melanin aches,
My blackness sheds tears as my sense of beauty once hated,
Now brought into the public eye, now everyone all bums and lips inflated,
Something once that was seen as characteristics of my people,
Now a trend.
So sorry if I don’t follow a trend that is sickening,
But I won’t stop my smile from glistening,
Cause there are things you can’t take from us,
Our freedom, our pride, our melanin.

They say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder
But sometimes I ask myself, how can this be?
Cause when I look with my eyes, I only start to feel resent
and I begin to despise, the things I realize like
how my women of color have been simplified, and hypserxualized
how the black woman's body has been used and abused and now
It personifies, sexuality and promiscuity, out of all the things media feeds us these are some of the worst lies
You see cause black women are queens, and when white culture saw their worth, they were rattled
They couldn't help but try to minimize and de-legitimize, and put a guise over the eyes of all that viewed her
She is not just a big ***, big lips or hips
She is the mother of humanity, in her essence from her hair, to lips to her fingertips she is a Queen, and she is to be respected.
And I will die for her honor, We will not go back into slavery days, I will not stand here while she gets up on stage naked and her body is dissected, and her soul, her essence neglected, her heart, her mind infected.
From these queens come the workers, the Kings, without the black woman we have no past and we have no future
We must protect the black woman, for she is sacred like scripture.

Brown maple sugar,
Cinnamon toast complexion.
Hershey chocolate chip.
Carmel Hazel brown eyes,
Red sugarcane lips.
Your curvy curvaceous thighs.
With enough melanin color blended so perfectly together, bronzing the brownish shade of your muscles.
Natural ethnic hair.
Thick, coarse or silky.
It is perfectly acceptable by me.
***** so big it needs to have its own legs to stand on.
Your blackness is ****.
And it **** sure is beatiful.

tell me can you love my black
even when it's about to crack
falling through gates of hell
your black don't crack but mine did
after too many lies and too many wounds that never healed before others grew
your black don't crack but mine did
after too many burns by kind actions with ill intent and too many souls that came but did not stay
your black don't crack but mine did
after too many cries of help that went unanswered and too many words that went unsaid
-Mena W.

I am dripping Melanin and honey.
I am black without apology.

Dear America,
How are you ?
I must ask what do you see as beauty . For I am a young black women who just want to be beautiful in your eyes and so I ask what must I become to be such in yours. Must I buy the hair of foreigners and wear it as my own since I know my natural hair and rough texture to distasteful for your eyes. I have become too ashamed of my appearance therefore please tell me what I must do to be beautiful. I know that my thick thighs and curves are not acceptable. I eat less and run more but I can't seem to quite reach the image displayed in the magazines. My buttocks are quite small and I do not have the means to pay for implantations but I want to be beautiful so I must find a way, right? Oh America my biggest blemish is my dark skin. I search for bleaching products since lighter skin women are superior and I must be part of the hierarchy of beauty. My skin contains this substance called melanin that I just can't seem to get rid of but of course I won't disappoint you I will find a way to become the right complexion.  America I truly do want to be beautiful in your eyes and will do what is necessary. I want men to find me appealing, I want my fellow women to envy my beauty, and most of all I want to be what you view beautiful. ..I have foreign hair now no more  of that rough natural hair, my skin is much lighter and I am a size zero now with a large buttocks. I do not recognize myself in the mirror but why does that matter because you think I'm beautiful now, right America?

Why are you holding back?
If only you could let go...
Hard times would get easier to handle, if you just embrace the natural flow.
I speak to you with a book wide open, from lines that give light to mind. I am on a journey just the same as you are, so not all that I say may be right. And as life goes on, I'll gain more sight, and know that I was wrong. Yet when the feeling comes from the marrow, I know I've held it in too long, and know it is time to write.
Take those kinks out of your head and give life to what was dead and become resurrected. O sister, we connect telepathically, and O brother, I know you know there is something within us that most can not perceive. There is more of us than the grains of sands in the ocean; our hair is like that of the waves upon the sea. Just open your minds eye to who you are, let go and live naturally.
But how can you know if you don't search, tell me how can you remember if you don't seek?
It's time to erase the lies and unshackle the mind to the truth of your own history.

Sometimes, I am in love with myself.
I force them to witness my love for my melanin
because they would love for me to hate my melanin.
I know that I am seen, but I want to be heard, 
The first amendment allows me to speak, but they refused to hear a word-
that comes from my mouth.
My lips stereotyped as too black.
My diction too proper to act like this,
yet my slang is too ghetto to act like that...
Sometimes, I wonder what it's like to be white.
I hate being stared at when I speak in Spanish.
I never know if it's in disgust or in comfort, 
because the sound of the double "r" rolling off of my tongue
sounds like the ricochet of the bullets they fire from their guns.
Since they no longer can enslave us like animals, they slaughter us
because, "if I can't have you no one can."
I refuse to be put down.
I refuse to shutdown.
My brown skin threatens,
and you all should be afraid.
Because I will banish your negativity with my Latin American flow,
speaking in Spanish with the Bachata tempo filling my veins.
My Ebonics is iconic, 
and I refuse to be put in a box when the world is a sphere.

I... am more... than this.