Untradeable. Pain is silver,
Sterling. Serrated, dual-faced coin.
Its flip side, a mirror.

What does it mean to be free?

I look down to my hands and my feet and what do I see?

Not shackles, not chains, not confederate flags,

not the fields and not the pains

Of my ancestor who were slain

Who worked in the sun and in the rain

What does it mean to be free?

Does it mean to go to college and get a degree?

Does it mean to live with your head held high and your eyes wide shut?

To live with that uneasiness way down in your gut

To keep your mouth shut and your head off the platter

To many, it seems they’d rather do the latter

What does it mean to be free?

Momma never told me, that’s something that in her lifetime she probably never got to see

Something in her lifetime she never got to be

You can take the shackles off a person and they still won’t be free

Because you destroyed their minds years ago to an insurmountable degree

You, you wretched system

You took my culture, took my last name

You try to steal all my remakes but that’s all in vain

You hate me, and you wish I’d fall

You wish I never find freedom but I got the wake up call

You keep chasing me, like my name’s David, and yours is Saul

Because for decades that wretched system put the necks of my people up against a wall

But I got my hands up, I’m ready for a brawl

Yeah I’m ready to do it all

I’m ready to throw you like a football

But best believe I’m coming for you last like an 8 ball

Because you see, for far too long I’ve been trying to be free

And all along you keep promising me

All the freedom I could want at just a small fee

The fee Martin Luther King jr, he paid in blood

The fee that Malcom X paid in blood

The fee that Emmit Til paid in blood

The fee that Trayvon Martin paid in blood

And now here we are, trying to get what’s been promised

And what will it take us, more blood?

This is a call

A wake up call

As the winds of America’s past time pass over the embers of racial distress

Soon their will be a flame

There was riotting in the 60′s and who is say that today it won’t be the same

The ****** memories of America’s past still brings fear

The fire of racial inequality builds and smoke fills the air

Innocent men getting shot down in the street but who really cares?

As a mother’s heart bursts in sadness as she’s reduced to tears

Hands up,don’t shoot!

They think all we do is ****** and loot

But who am I to refute?

Maybe they know who I am and feel my pain? Or maybe I’m saying #BlacklivesMatter all in vain

All in vein cause this pain runs deep

Everytime I see another mother weep

Another black life lost, who will pay the cost? Who will sanctify the souls? And take burning coals to holes where these bodies lay,

Like the one that holds Freddie grey,

Another black man in Baltimore just trying to survive another day, until his life got taken away,

tell me,what more am I to say ,

Hands up don’t shoot

Or how about I can’t breathe!

Please listen and take heed

Systematic racism is trying to destroy the black man’s seed

And what are we supposed to do? Get down on our knees? Cry and plead?

No, what we must we do is Rise up and lead,

That’s what our communities need

That’s what our communities need because we have black daughters, black sons

Black sons whose light won’t get to shine, won’t get to shine because of the barrel of *****’s gun

Oh *****, you wise old soul, you put a badge on henchmen and told them to take control

Told them to go on patrol, and shoot to ****, the young, the old

And you don’t gotta hide, you got the media on your side,

pumping lie after lie, making mockery of every mother’s cry

And that’s why I, stand here with my fist in the air

Staring right at you, ready to lay my life down with no fear

Because like Malcolm, like Martin I’m just another black man working to free the slaves,

Working tirelessly to break down this crooked system you paved

So with the roar of a lion I shout!

This is not a test, this is a call

A call to the people,

Not just a call but an unprecedented sequel

A call to the world to look at every man as equal

And hopefully this equality can take my people out of poverty

Open up blinded eyes so that our white counterparts can see

And for my young brothers to see that there’s no merit in gold chains with no brains

***** still in charge cause he still holds the reigns

Some of our young men got no sense cause they got no change

No leaders to look up to

No fathers to look up to

Just mothers to run to, and to those mothers I say thank you

But to the black men where are you?

I know ***** separated us from our families

but the return of the black man must come quick

Cause extinction is on the verge, and I don’t wanna go back to stones and sticks

Back to lifting bricks, or selling bricks, or flipping bricks just trying to make it

But I look at the state of my people and I can’t take it

So I can’t fake it, cause I feel it

Within me, deep in my soul

So here I am standing, here I am, bold!

No shackles on me, I am going to stay free

And Create a legacy

where I can sit back and watch

My Children be free







M Wheeler

i am sorry that the world looks down
on your skin
on the darkness of it
calling it ugly
unsightly
i am sorry
for the comrades you've lost
(mothers fathers sisters brothers
innocents)

i am sorry that
people shame you for
the color of your skin
as if you can do something about it
as if it were a curse
when all it does is symbolize
the strength
the tenacity of your people

i am sorry that society
breathes down on your necks
burns your fingers
whips your backs
i am so sorry so sorry
for everything

She wears a sterling silver lie on her finger,

A Christmas gift, unintentionally leading her into Fraud,
months after the wrapping paper had been torn away.

Never gifted with piano fingers, hers pulsated with words waiting to pour through her pen

Having passed faith tests with flying colors,  she looked at the rounded Christ less crucifix, Jesus replaced with fashionable jewels,

She believed it was a medal for coming out alive and in faith

Little did she know that the test was a mere three months away

Not unfamiliar with temptation,

She knew her weakness,

Knowing herself only to be human,

Seeing the ins and outs of her fragility,

Still pushing onward into hope,

Bordering on the suburban developed atheism, but always landing on the grassy faith.

But as one who was too old to be young forever, there was one whose failure

Would drag her out to the desert littered in nihilism.

She feared how at home she felt there,

Seeing her reflections not in any oasis, but in the land that once held such promise

But had been drained of breath and water

The dry ground being undistinguishable from her feet,

too tired to keep going, too broken to stay,

Ignoring that lone piece of metal, glaring from her fingers,

Being covered in the dried and drained land,

Hiding away the lie that was stuck to her,

Fingers swollen with the untapped sap,

Too thickened with sorrow to be drained easily,

Growing into her skin, scarring over,

Ingrown faith, digging itself under her skin,

Unavoidable metal in a desert so bleak,

A Medal that brought prior pride

Now a blood clot in vain of surviving.