Ravens dance upon highwires.
Flashing pinwheels spinning in their beaks.
The merry-go-round grinds,
Its rusted gears, squealing into the wind.
Book pages whirl and fly off into the sky.
The fox’s cry to the butterfly
Went unheard in this whitewashed night.

These whitewashed walls scream out my discontent,
The faces of inmates line the corridors, impassive and unimpressed,
I bang on steel locker doors, but I hardly make a dent,
My words are not replied to, and my screams go answered,
It doesn't matter though, they are silent screams of aid,
They resound through these hallways like the echoes of a gale,
The cold of locker steel is an ever foreboding constant.
They line the hallways, like the vigilant sentinels of a jail,
And I can help but think, how familiar the two seem to be,
And how in one a perfect illusion is created, of being free,
These whitewashed walls are filled to the brim,
With students and inmates, angels and demons alike,
Teachers and wardens stalk these halls, hidden behind their hollow faces,
Bullies and inmates swarm these halls, hidden behind unfamiliar faces,
In these whitewashed walls, there are blackened souls and empty holes,
Holes where hearts used to be, and coal where souls used to be,
These whitewashed walls are alive, and they bear witness to it all,
And here these whitewashed walls remain, through our rise and our fall.

My culture betrayed me at birth,
Abandoned me on the West Coast
And stripped the heritage from my
Rosy red tongue
                                       the Cali sun
Kissing my ****** skin, carefully, softly,
Wrapping me in her white bed sheets
Calling me one of her own.