Torn

I'm tired of being mad

And being angry for mad's sake

Uplifting every voice to sing

I'm tired of the rip and the tear

The whips and the tears bottled in these crescent tubes we call eyes

I'm tired of a mistake imagined

We are not mistakes

Imagine if we capture the swapped blood through whips and fists

The DNA dormant in the fold of leather

Transfer it in the next catch of back flesh

The knowledge caress through the chasm we are born into

This distress

More or less the same

And the fingertips folded around the bullets

Tumbling their last names through our hearts

If we talk

And we walk the thread that connects our trauma

We'd surround the galaxy in a film of blood and grit

That will plunge us back into next dark age

We are dark and aged

Consumed in caged rage

Seeping out of every pore despite the cleansing

The escaping through sage blooms enchanting

Asked to swallow this enchanting blend of new slavery

Shuffled in the billfold of a robed billionaire renamed POTUS

These be the clan of empty souls

Ghost riders haunting the children of the wind

Asking for salvation in the only pain they know how to inflict

I'm tired

I'm tired of this body folded into collapse

The wayward glance of destiny

Syringed and propagandized to the lowest common denominator of boy

Boy, boy scripted

Boy in scripture

Script written for the boy to be a fixture of a man

A fixed tongue sunk into the belly of a maroon

Scratching at this life

I'm tired

I'm tired of having to bear the wrath

And bear the story my skin bears without a choice

As if the bear can tell the people he is a mouse

Regardless of how he has perfected the squeak

He is still bear, big, threatening

I am black and bare, big, male, threatening

Menace this too I am accustomed to

Regardless of boardroom