Are We Free?

Sun, 01/14/2018 - 02:40 -- CaecaeW

We wear invisible chains alongside these bars

Holding within our ancestor’s abuse and still fresh scars

Trapped in a cycle of “pseudo-legal” denied rights

With a golden badge ready to end my life

One parent in and out of jail isn’t in the past

Prison reform is a myth and my proof is a criminal, deadbeat dad

Every year his jail will get a new master

Coming with a brand new whip of rotten food thrown on a plate made of rust and plaster

We still continue on

Paying our punishment until the ounce’s true cost is gone

Even though our hands no longer stink of cotton

Our people’s struggle is far from forgotten

 

Weed, Hennessy, Coke, and Crack

Labels of stereotype without fact

But in reality one part remains true

These poisons make it easy for an arrest by the boys in blue

We are those who they see as drug fiends

Even though whites are also burning trees

We used to always look to the burning cross

As the cause of black vote loss

But now we have a new enemy without a white sheet

That legally they don’t call a cheat

A method making the rules firmly tight

Two little words called three strikes

 

We live in the decade of “all about me”

But it should be seen as a time of ignoring tragedy

Inequality inflates every cell

With the U.S. “majority” having money to bail

A country where a white man gets 3 months for committing rape

And a black person gets more than triple for arriving to probation late

Even locked up they fight with stomachs empty

Because Aramak starves our felons but makes money of plenty

This could be me trying to survive in the pen

More likely in jail due to color of my skin

 

My hope is that every person will cringe

When I scream out “Black is the new Orange!!”

A new slave, underpaid, trapped in a metal cage

Working in prison a million times below minimum wage

Targeted for cruel racial slurs like “Crack whore” or “Crack baby”

A common result of our history with our 14th hurt with “vagrancy”

This was all a new scheme for the system to have control

Like their failed “project” of separate but equal or Jim Crow

Vagrancy and black codes treated blacks as a waste of space

Former masters using twisted politics to return their power in a haste

A continuous racial battle to stay the “majority”

Harsh treatment and the highest imprisoned men being the blacks out the “minority”

 

The Clintons dangling false promises and positive vibes

But this is useless with misstep of “Super Predator” and both known to speak lies

But they aren’t the original presidential slaves to white supremacy

Long before even Reagan lived a man with a dark legacy

Nixon is the cause for this war on drugs

Originally targeting hippies and minorities personified as thugs

 

But Ronald is not far off from receiving blame

In his terms we can see a spread of AIDS and crack cocaine

Crack was a known villain to affect the poor

Seen as a drug done by blacks when whites may smoke it more

A cheaper drug that was creating almost the same

As a pricey white chemical giving half the sentence but twice the fame

 

I didn’t vote for Obama cause I was too young then

But I remember how it was after Bush’s time found its end

Him being black was just the icing on top

But after him it seemed progress would stop

Trump followed his daddy’s ways

Becoming the new poster boy for the KKK

Trying to go back in time and “Make American great Again”

Code words for Neo Nazis he defends!

 

Laws were not made originally for me and the people of color

But we know that the system of white supremacy makes this a reminder

Race is still seen as a determinant of class

Bigotry is fueled by a broken caste

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This poem is about: 
Me
My community
My country
Our world

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