There is darkness in this world,
even darker than my skin.
Hate’s knife cuts so deep,
where shall I begin?
They prey on our culture,
Want the braids and the beats.
But don’t want the struggle,
because they gotta eat.
Our bodies defiled,
our histories erased.
All hail Christopher Columbus,
And put an interstate over our graves.
You say that you know,
Because you got black friends.
But that’s not the half, the whole,
Beginning nor end.
You see, you break up our families,
There is no permanence in our homes.
Can’t even eat ice cream,
On a night home alone.
Our slain children become hashtags,
Mothers outliving their kids.
Holding down the whole house,
While niggas servin’ bids.
Our black lives don’t matter
So you back the blue.
But what that color means for me,
Is not the same for you.
Y’all set this shit up,
Red lines and Jim Crow,
It may not be in the textbooks,
But we damn sure know.
We asked for justice, fuck peace.
Forty acres and a mule?
Property turned people,
Y’all made your own rules.
While we built this country,
You built your family wealth.
On the backs of black heroes,
And left us nothing else.
Greenwood, Hayti
There are so many others.
You stole communities from us
No inheritance for my brothers.
But history has shown
That resilience is in our blood
When it rains it always pours
But we dance in the mud.
We make magic with our pain,
And breed beauty with black love.
Holding on to the faintest hope,
That “the talk” will be enough.
Thank god for the Internet,
Maybe more people will see.
I can’t take off my skin,
I just want to be me.
We just want the chance to build,
From pasts layered with trauma.
Or we’ll pass down the hurt,
Through broken daddies and mamas.
Put the politics to the side,
We just wanna be whole.
To Botham and Atatiana,
We honor your souls.
