By Michael Tyler, EJS Poet-in-Residence
Shift the gears in your fears from park to overdrive…
put your pedal to the metal come and take this ride…
through harkened histories of darkened miseries…
pater plans in mater lands were never mysteries…
stop defending and pretending about the Eden days…
the beginning of the sinning of deceiving ways…
all the planning in the damning of your condemnation…
all the stealing and the dealing you did in every nation…
your hypocrisy is your theocracy…
it’s the sacrilege you wrote in our democracy…
you stole the highest of the holy from her sacred soul…
then fabled it and labeled it a real-man goal…
you forced conversion from inversion of the greatest truth…
changed maternal to paternal in one fell swoop…
a machination of creation from a gloried rib…
the divination exploitation of a storied crib…
then taught Deuteronomy to all your progeny…
to strap your mothers and your daughters with misogyny…
turned your crime into the grime of self-blaming faults…
and you purified their wounds with self-shaming salts…
then came the devastation of your abomination…
and the deadly declaration for more domination…
you changed your patriarchal robes of always being right…
for the monopoly panoply of always being white…
we learned your golden rules by the scolding tools…
from the preachers and the teachers who were soulless fools…
debraining and restraining us as money mules…
so the monarchs and oligarchs could buy bigger jewels…
no hourly or salary for our toil and labors…
no bonus just the onus of your noose-knot favors…
just stock and trade to be your plows and maids…
picking bushels for the baskets that were daily weighed…
and our gashes from your lashes were the wages paid…
even when freedom came we couldn’t file a claim…
kept working for our masters just without the chains…
they gave us strapless boots for our years of degradation…
strange and bloody fruit was our only compensation…
the women made to stand in the shadow of a man…
and the hands that worked the land wearing the devil’s brand…
still living those brutalities as day-to-day realities…
because forever in her cavity is the savagery of tragedy…
and the Ku Klux gravity of your hate and your depravity…
damn right we post about it every day we click on Blavity…
that’s why we live with majesty to shine away the travesty…
facing the same old foes, bracing the same old woes …
and everybody knows just how the story goes…
everybody knows…
how the story goes…
From the author:
This new poem is quite different from other pieces that I’ve written, in that it is a complete departure in style, meter, lyrical pace, and syntax from the more classical style of poetry I write. From reading and following so many current social, political, and cultural stories in the news, but more particularly via social media, I see an activation of youth around the world that is truly inspiring to me. As such, I wanted to write in hip-hop, slam poetry verse with the winding use of ellipses to create flow, to make an overture to the youth at the forefront of passionate reaction here and elsewhere.
In this country, there has been a convergence of stories that has created a parallelism or dichotomy of cause and effect, in my perspective. The Cornell 7 case has intersected with the dismissive deaths of Black youths, particularly two deaths linked to Mississippi: Nolan Wells and Kohen Wiley. The system of White male patriarchy that orders and orchestrates this country – our society, politics, economics, and culture is responsible for the sexism and racism that produced and continues to produce these heinous crimes against humanity.
In fact, the violation of women and the degradation of African Americans have always run parallel in their manifestations, as both groups have been victimized by White male domination, since this country’s inception. I’ve written this piece with a focus on that intersectionality and the chronic reality of it, with the last two verses written to illustrate the systemic, blatant, and ongoing nature of it all.