Poem #14 of 365: Public Transportation

She is the Amistad,

Transporting Them

To a foreign land.

Their wrists and tongues

Will be tied for decades

With the same hemp

Nooses that will hang them

 

Children will breed children

For decades thinking That fucking

Is the only way to Salvation

(When all they needed was a 

black Barbie doll or a father

who cared), And the harder they fuck raw,

The closer (they think)

They'll be to Mother Africa,

With her deplorable conditions

And escalating HIV rates

 

A tragic homeland so forgotten

We think that naming our kids

Sharmeika, Tameika, or Tyrique

Is what it means to be Afrocentric;

A homeland so indistiguishible

We forget our luxuries and assume

We can  live on a bowl of rice

And drink pure goat milk

As flies sting our eyes

And babies don't know

If they'll live or die

To see the red clay again. 

The train roars past the Upper East Side 

Like a an unfed rhino attacking

The undone rail system Indians

used to enslave Us in Africa.

The conductor says  "Next stop is. . ."

And you can not 

Hear the rest for his voice fades. 

 

These are sad times where

A beggar is not really poor,

But the man with the 

$135 Timberland boots,

$45 fitted ball cap,

And no job is.

We live in a pathetic society

Where we care 

Too damn much 

About things that will never matter.

Materialism is the source of salvation

but we will never find our way home.

The train goes several routes,

But the hood will only get us but so far.