reflecting on priorities
they evolve
but rarely change
constituting priorities
starting with article 1
implementing priorities
written in section 2
compromising priorities
black’s shall be 3/5th’s a person
results of priorities
property owned and named
at the beginning,
justifying the means-
identity and self-determination lost-
in the end
priorities of a constitution
stated before the bill of rights
which govern,
and promises our lived experience
so when you say,
“the founding fathers”
for some reason
I don’t feel like a loved child
rather a step child
a bastard
or one spawn of wedlock
or tryst
but I should love this document so
this parchment you deem too holy to change wholly
to which one of it’s writers said
“I tremble for my country, when I reflect that God is just…”
I am not lawless
my being had to be rewritten into law
from those above the law
I am outside of the law
rebelling from my in laws
so when I loot riot and protest
I’m just expressing your projections
imitating you
mirrored reflections and sentiments
spawn of you
claiming this land
renaming it
once stolen pillaged and plundered
but what goes around…
as they say
And, they say
“God is good,
All the time”
so let the church say…
well yaw know
Whitewashing
please stop with your illusions
please stop acting as if Americans do not benefit from exclusions
please stop acting like America isn’t racist
please stop acting like you accept all color of faces
please stop hiding behind clever placed words scribed and pontificated
please stop acting like your government doesn’t profit from discrimination
please stop acting like equality is real when it has to be litigated
please stop ignoring the fact that prejudice isn’t assimilated
please stop believing justice is real when it is overly disseminated
please stop acting like you see us innocent, when we are born incriminated
please stop acting like you fear us when we are systemically intimidated
please stop acting like assistance gives our struggle vindication
please stop acting like you don’t prefer us as subjugated consumers
please stop acting like the terror you still engage us with are just rumors
please stop acting like slavery didn’t happen
please stop acting like the 3/5ths human being compromise didn’t happen
please stop acting like lynch mobs and the KKK didn’t happen
please stop acting like the Tulsa Bombing didn’t happen
please stop acting like gentrification, redlining, and zoning doesn’t happen
please stop acting like highways and waste management doesn’t happen
please stop acting like bad water doesn’t happen
please stop acting like miseducation and low budget schooling don’t happen
please stop acting like I even cracked the surface
because so much more has happened
because so much more still happens
and we were good where we were…
until you happened
and the irony of it all is
now somehow you act as if
we happened
like we are dead weight you must bear
who brought the weight over anyway?!
at least I said please
Osmosis Immortality
the ideas we love
the idea of love
people
they are..
we are,
fungible pieces
of, and in,
the whole-
rather, the idea
and as we die
the idea
it must live on
as so shall we
in the amaranthine of love
and its omnipresent obeisance
or it would be that
our deaths
would be an allegory of perdition
a memory’s coup de grace
succumbing to a solemn, muted finality
and our lives
cloistered into obscurity
a sojourn of nihility
meandering to a wend of infinite futility
ideas
the ideas of love
the idea of love
you may go
but the idea,
it must stay
Whose Feelings are These?
I don’t know
if
if
if
if I have e
if I have emo
if I have emotions!?!
or am I just selfish
would I rather you feel for me
feel what I am incapable of feeling
so I can experience what it may look like through you
and then I can repeat the action
or maybe I don’t want the weight
the weight of feeling alone
and so I want you to feel like I do
I want you to feel with me
so you can share this weight I bear
because I can not possibly carry the responsibility
I do not wish to will myself to hold it all
is guilt an emotion?
what of avoidance?
or impassiveness or apathy?
is the intense desiring of love,
and companionship an emotion
or is it too, selfish?
is desire itself, or lust, an emotion?
or is it too, selfish?
is longing or loneliness an emotion?
or is it too, selfish?
is jade or expectations an emotion?
or is it too, selfish?
is empathy an emotion?
or is it just mimicking?
if I feel what you feel, because you feel
is it what I feel?
or is it my desire to feel what another feels,
because I can not
or do not feel it in myself?
is wanting to feel an emotion?
or am I just addicted to wanting to feel?
is feeling, addicting?
what of being numb?
I
I
I
I just don’t know anymore
Living Hell
imagine
if hell is your worst day
repeated over and over
and life is a prison
encased in enclosures
and dying is inconvenient
denied any closure
then when I die
I’ll be living the same living hell
that I lived inside prison
so death is
what I live daily
over and over
Wardlow, Russell #78756
sentenced to a Living Hell
Void
the full day echoes the shallowness of a shell
inside it as deadly as its surrounding
tranquility only finds its feet in chaos, peace is impossible
though, tranquility found in chaos, an impossible peace
claustrophobic this being encased to dwarfed ideas
in the autumn of company, loneliness still whispers its presence
like crumpled leaves
a star dies
evolution has yet outgrow solemnity
what, who was once familiar, now stranger
for I am the only change I recognize