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How can we see where we are going

Under a million layers of dark night?

They weigh us down, block our sight.

Still, we are not, may as well be dead.

Except the pain we cause, our screams.

Until any gains brief moments of fame,

Fully alive, to lede on the nightly news.

Will you be a cause celeb, with toe tag

Labeled with your details, the last I.D.

For the morgue worker’s shift change?

Why would we think a mother’s pain,

A father’s grief weighs less than ours?

We  plead for justice to seek humanity;

Yet, humanity denied stokes rage’s fire.

Our mythic past was oh so short, unless

Shackled, stacked close, to swell profit,

In a filthy fetid hold, a foul Guineaman,

Ill, scared, no sun, wallowing in waste.

You yearn to live, yet, you yearn to die,

Knowing this choice is no longer yours.

Pray to your gods, sacred elders entreat.

Rue your fate or cling to love left home?

Snatched away, without hugs, your wife

And children grieve their loss, every day.

You live. Will you consider running, go,

Get ensnared by the fierce slave patrols?

Brute thugs, whips, beating, degradation.

Until you lose hope, home, till life shows

You new love. You remain, birth  children

Born into slavery, of old faith, a new God.

Centuries on; you work hard still earn less.

You settle on a poor parcel you can afford,

With other good people like you, trying to

Have rights promised by the emancipation.

Still, unequal; lower wages; still suspected.

While you’re dreaming you must be lifted,

Fulfill your forced destiny, your new nation

You see this dream unfold for the lucky few

Who strive and struggle to reach star status.

Living high, afraid to walk the streets alone.

You mark the shining city where fear’s gone.

Not segregated, with war waged upon you to

Hold you down, flood drugs into your ‘hood

To hook you, make some see the golden ring.

To some, temporary oblivion, no hope to fear.

Those with the ring guard it like a Holy Grail.

When guns are readily available, no questions.

Asked, winnows the ensnared within, without,

Funnels them into the new slavery, the prisons,

Giving birth to militarized police departments.

When we see the pictures a man shot by police,

A woman, murdered in bed and men strangled.

Necks knelt upon, point to imbalance, powered

Minute by minute of falsely claimed superiority.

Time to remember injustice, hate being targeted.

Staggering statistics, created by any racist LEO.

Why do we wonder at centuries-old pain boiling

Over in rage, riot, fires, looting; mixed and fed by

Armed right-wing militia, riot police, not to erupt?

Why do you wonder if I expect nothing to change?

Who am I to write this screed, some old white guy

Who knows he does not, cannot feel such histories?

I can only imagine through my limited empathetic

Sense, how horrendous such a past, present, maybe

Future must have been, must be; It rips me apart at

One remove, subsumed into the pain, guilt, sorrow.

So I write attempting to absorb it and tell anyone

As or more blind than me to stop and ponder how

We might shed our millions of layers of ignorance,

Move from our dark night into light, see each other.

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Peace is Purpose, Nonviolence is Strength,  Diversity is Unity, Empathy is Empowerment

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VOTE, November 3, 2020!

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Peace is Purpose, Nonviolence is Strength, Diversity is Unity, Empathy is Empowerment

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Brent Harris Fine Art

Philip Brent Digital Art

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