I have a Question: What’s Black?
Answer: Black beside-eyes trailing
You just walk down the street.
Black be the innovators that trailblaze
Without the recognition because they
Didn’t learn the power of white-collar.
We were distracted by the nooses we were forced to wear for necklace accessories.
Black be the symptoms for congestion in non-gentrified hoods
Fatigue from trying to outsmart a system involuntarily stacked against us
New loss of taste for better lifestyles than ones we already struggle living
Nausea from the losses. We are running out of characters for hashtags and
movements to keep up with the rising statistical charts of our dying bodies.
Feverish in the coldness of a country whose legal system stems from modified slave laws per state.
I have difficulty breathing because the same people I call SOS for emergencies are compressing my neck.
Black was surviving the symptoms of a COVID-19 Before there was ever a Pandemic.
This is why I have headaches, I mean Questions:
What is America?
Am I American?
Or Scapegoat?
That is the question.
Afro-Latino American
Or Illegal Alien Nigger?
What’s color?
What’re gay rights?
What’s Feminism?
What are human rights?
What does Jim Crow feel like?
Penial systems have
always been home away
from home. “Activists” and
“defenders” labeled “criminals.”
Have you ever woken
up worried if this is your last day free?
Whether you might be at the wrong place
at the wrong time for the last time?
I can’t help that my face is stereotyped as criminal—
terrorist—alien—undesirable— or expendable.
What’s justice?
What’s fair trade?
What’s an electoral college?
What’s a popular vote?
What’s refugee camps and reservations in the ghettos of America?
Who are the amendment rights for—
when civilians crash down servers requesting guidelines for
citizenship elsewhere? Will we be shot down for wearing hijabs
in the streets like the strange fruits wearing hoods or wearing face masks?
Why is survival during a global pandemics still an excuse for profiling gang affiliation when following safety protocols?
Is it a crime to blackface when one is born not knowing the difference between sable skin pigments and the contrast of photoshopped elegance traded for fair toned beauty?
When will assimilation and appropriation draw a line?
When will it be okay for love to continue to be a blind adventure?
When will it be okay to say black lives matter without people trying to silence our voices?
When will it be okay for our children to play on playgrounds without developing segregation of class?
I’ve never been more worried for a country and its people.
I see the shadow of Jim Crow materializing into a person again.
Amendment rights we non-whites were giving so that we can
have a chance to be equals—revoked… man fuck it.
