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Jonathan Moya Oct 2020
Strange fruit lives in the
bones of black mothers,

the blood of their sons,
marrow of their daughters.

Blue winds drift by
full of poplar scents,

aromas that never leave
the maternal soul.

They exhort their sons
to be careful,

be safe,  
make it back home.
  
They know they can die
for the smallest things,
for absolutely nothing.

Yet, they also know the American Dream
through the body of their sons
they hold closely in their arms.

They watch them leave,
hoping they experience

just ordinary prejudice and
not a blue knee on their neck,

that sculpts
them both
into a black pieta

Note:  

Strange Fruit refers to the song about lynching made popular by both Nina Simone and Billie Holiday.  Here are the lyrics:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather
For the wind to ****
For the sun to rot
For the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop
Emma Apr 2020
The words of the King, said long ago and towards a vision of he who no longer breathes,
Of a future where different colored children are intertwined and men sees but not seethes,
Spoken by a man of dark skin who rose to be the king of freedom and equality and love,
Spoken in front of tall white buildings and spoken below a flying white dove.

He said, “I have a dream,” and those four words became a legend told to the next century
He raised his hands and shouted to the sky above, “Freedom and liberty!”
Even as decades went by those words were repeated and repeated, darkness into dawn,
And when children ask for the source, men say, “The Luther King is his name” to the fawns.

Yet of new times, southern states are still with loaded shotguns, ebonic skin shun red in the sun
Voices heard, yet brown children still fall seperated and their killers still hold loaded guns
Their mother(less)s hold them—Pietà—and shout to the sky above, “Freedom and liberty!”
And marches with signs saying “Black Lives Matter” carry the wake and funeral for equality.

Reaper comes to take the child, yet in death's place is the plants of a possible future of hope
Where society rebuilds and remakes and rehashes and restores, for light we wish to *****
“Is justice and righteousness rolling down?” "Is it like a mighty river who saves?”
We the people ask, and the King wonders too—the King, your king, who watches from his grave.
After almost a year of inactivity, I return with a poem made for a religion assignment. This is based around Amos 1:9 from the Bible as well as Martin Luther King's speeches and Letter from Birmingham. "Strange Fruit," the Pieta statue, and BLM also come to play in this. During this quarantine, I hope to go back to being active on this site like I was when I first joined. It was made 4/17/20.
Hannah Apr 2016
And what of the thick-thighed woman

            who held a dying god in her lap?

            History has silenced her grief to stone.

But what of endurance as sharp as love?



Do Zeus’s tears still stain her dress?

            Her atlas hands guide thorned crowns

            To rest, as the weight of heaven

forsaken, collapses.



Womb made machine;

           Reach out your hand and feel the crimson––

           Hips that birthed the civilizations of the world,

I worship the god called woman.
Danny Price Jan 2015
Eyes so serene as your body relaxed,
your passing never passed until
a gravestone was all I had.
An edged slab of marble
unwelcoming, cold,
won't compare to the lingering life
so close to behold.
I miss how I missed you
when I missed you the most,
as love's just crux howls
only when losing its host.
Thus through such virtue
I could lastly accept mine,
enough so to nurture,
and cry for my Pieta
one last time.

— The End —