Colonial history will still dictate how the men around here
Practice love through hate
For aesthetic purposes; an ethnic marker,
Gender controlled by husband...son...father
Against my will.

I can let nature take its course, the uneasiness in how I pass
Bears nothing to your immoral force with which you open me up.
Your gateway to a selfish pleasure,
And I once believed that being loved
Was close to being treasured.
I am as trapped as a bird in a cage,
Modified and made ugly by your commission.
Disfigured by tradition and religion and holy wars,
And chained by the fear  that renders me yours
Against my will.

My sisterhood grows from northeast Africa
To the sub-Sahara.
Young and joyless and bound by doctrines.
No pursuit of happiness. No pleasure to come
No great expectations. Nothing foretold
Nothing that has been or gone.
Objects more of control than desire;
My eyes that once shone with innocent love
Now burn with hate fuelled fire…and all because...
You denied me a fall from grace, you denied me self discovery,
No different to putting scars on my face
Or is that too much a public recovery?
You denied me womanhood, you denied me choice.
I censor my thoughts and silence my voice
And I think of our mothers and their mothers
And of the honour and pride they felt
When this exact same fate to them was dealt.
And why did they not feel humiliated? Abused?
Mutilated? Used?
Maybe when we live in a world without light
We relinquish our strengths and fall prey to our plights.
Enlightenment and knowledge, I was lead to believe,
Are the roads to freedom.
Our mothers learned nothing other than to serve and to please,
And here am I, enlightened but sedated,
Imprisoned, captive, segregated.
Dysmorphic now, a victim still,
And all of this against my will.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2013

My vessel has been anchored, attacked, and conquered
Leaving the pieces shattered and somber
Stranded within a dynamic society
My lifeless bones still dance with gaiety

Misguided, unrequited, i have lost my light
And here i lie undecided
if sinking is a reward of being silent
Lost in a sea composed of
stringless, seamless puppets
I'm reluctant, broken, cracked and sewed in
Posed and told how to blend within
The flawless flaws of retrospective laws
Oppress what others call a
“Suitable demographic”

My vessel has been anchored, attacked, and conquered
Leaving the pieces shattered and somber
Stranded within a dynamic society
My lifeless bones still dance with gaiety

Attach the wires and deem yourself my master
Superiority begets a systematic wrath of
Powerless demons with a potent strategy
Demand my steps to guide you into the perfect victory
Media-- social media socializing the roles like ghouls of anesthesia
Taking the control, then providing a hole of grief, anger, less goals and lost souls.

My vessel has been anchored, attacked, and conquered
Leaving the pieces shattered and somber
Stranded within a dynamic society
My lifeless bones still dance with gaiety

Beautiful love; disgusting, repulsive
Painful betrayal, sensible- insensitive
Lost integrity; sorry, mine or yours?
True to self, or to devoid ancient laws

My elation, always tainted
Congratulation, belated, weighted
My good news- hard to swallow?
Sanction post conflict comes hollow

Some find favour with ease
They find it easy to please
Pleasure and pain sit in balance
In small moments of ignorance

Some are celebrated
Cultivating hatred
Goodness breeds envy green
A dark divide widens unseen

Thoughtfulness so thoughtless,
Intellect, faith and progress
All at once; Gained and lost
Treasure in hand with forgotten cost

Careful how you tread
And with whom you break bread
Hold your values firm
While mine make you squirm

Had there been choice
I'd have nothing to voice
Trust me now if you ever did
It's oppression that we should forbid!

an iron bar in my chest, pinching my lungs,
my stomach. tears and taunts erupt--recoiling from your
touch, pleading
    crush me
                         set me free .

The mirror on the wall may as well **** me,
What stares back is not at all what I wanted to be.
My head’s not held high,
My wings of hope are stripped, and I’ll no longer fly.

They rolled me in bubble wrap and locked me in this box.
Foxes- yet they call themselves cops.
They stamped the box and labeled me “FRAGILE”.
Ripped me of my dignity and cursed me all this while.

It’s just feeding with the wolves-
The lambs come and they devour them whole.
FRAGILE- their little bones break.
I didn’t see it before, but now I think I’m awake.

So as it goes, they stack the boxes against the wall.
Shut away from reality in a little room at the end of the hall.
The wolves feed with foxes, they prey on the lambs.
And though the fox might not ****, there’s enough blood on his hands.

File away the papers, and they’ll deem it so,
As long as they’re quiet, than no one shall know.
Toss out the keys so the cries go unheard,
After all, there’s no reason to ***** the rest of the herd.

A lamb corrupted grows to a sheep,
Stripped of her wool, she no longer sleeps.

If you speak for her cause,
You already know that all hope is lost.
You’ve seen it before, or taken a blow to the head
Or something much worse and you wish you were dead.

Have you seen him?
The boy
tears running down his face like a shower head
Have you seen him?
the boy
rocking back and forwards like a metronome
Have you seen him?
wringing his neck
dangling from the tree in his closet
Have you seen it?
that tree
the tree that has hung infinite bodies
soiled in rules and norms
seeds of hate and malice
planted by those who hate us
Have you seen it?
the blood of our sisters and brothers
our black brothers and sisters
our native brothers and sisters
our latinx
our brown
our gay
our lesbian
our bi
our trans brothers and sisters
Don't you see it?
We exist on this same tree
divided

We are allowed to be unkind
To the sick, the deaf and the blind.
We gladly toss them into a ditch.
They don't matter; They are not rich.
We giggle and count what we’ve got
Laugh uproariously at those who have not.
We call our poor neighbors our inferiors
Because having money makes one superior.

It also works the same with every race.
Supremacy is about the color of your face.
It starts there and moves to include nationality.
Only Caucasian Americans match our reality.
Sure non-whites can pick our cotton for us
But, as for equality, the concept will bore us.
It says in the Bible you have to be from here
And white and Protestant, those words are clear.

And this stuff about **** and lesbians too
Not one word of that civil rights stuff is true.
My preacher told me gay people are abomination.
That’s why us Republicans support segregation.
That's some of what is wrong with our schools
Somebody has been listening to communist fools.
We need to get back to the good way things were
Before all this equality stuff was allowed to occur.

I tell you the truth, this stuff totally makes me burn.
I mean, these college-warped hippies need to learn
That this country is a Christian one, since beginning
So, we don’t want this equality stuff you’re selling.
Just shine our shoes and park our expensive cars
And we’ll tip you a little bit and there you are;
Right there in the place all of you ought to be;
Freedom is for us rich whites, it’s American history.