Russell Wardlow

I wish
you would listen
I wish
you could listen
I wish
you would stop believing
that to change the system
you abide exactly by the ways
the system created for you
to think you can go about
changing its system
only to continuously wonder,
“what am I missing?”
when I see change and movements
settling for the celebration
of inches!
Convicts! Can I get a Witness?!

you can’t change
what you innately fear
you can’t change
who you fear
you’ve given them all the power
you thought you were
empowering with
change happens on the
blood sweat and tears
of martyrs and revolutionaries
(eh mhm, I Am…A Revolutionary!)

not tiptoeing, good-hearted
followers of every rule
which only serve to
further limit, subjugate
contradict and confuse

Not liberals without
a, “selfless fuze”
will I Ever believe in
to give the meter it’s
biggest moves

my hope in you
is why I lose
because I know what I
get with the system
it’s consequences and
engendered behaviors I exhibit

but sitting on my lily pad
starring up at totem poles
I cant respect a frog
or a toad, scared to
leap! and only
“ribbits!”
I wish
you would get it
instead of doubling down
on your methods and contributions
just to feel offended
because there’s lives on the line
I wish
it wouldn’t take so much time
for you to get it

when you are White
and you say,
All Lives Matter
just think how that sounds

when your color gives you
an innate platform
which speaks volumes, yet
my value is stall clawing
from underground

just think how that sounds
when “Black Lives Matter”
wasn’t any ‘other’ color denounced
just think how that sounds
when American History
has created a civilization above
its own created Native and Black
burial grounds

just think how that sounds
when you say it as a
response, as if to add clarity
while perpetrating parody
silencing Black Pleas, with your precious
privilege’s hurt feelings…please!

creating groups
as responses to other groups
doesn’t create solutions
it is cloaked division
masquerading as good intentions

Duh, All Lives Matter!
that’s why you didn’t have to
create a group before
to say which

but when it comes to this
life, and its experiences
the whole Globe reacted to
Black Lives Matter…
it’s second time round
I wonder why?…

obviously someone’s value
must not be as obvious
therefore, attention and a call
to awareness was needed

so when your response
to someone else’s hurt is
“I hurt too…”
well, I don’t have to tell you
‘cuz deep down
you should know how that sounds