ode

So there’s an old threat in town
Like old bones exhumed
Fresh from the ground
Round and round do the ghosts walk
Speak to us when we talk
like there are no skeletons
in the closet

Please don’t frown at clowns
Covering their face with white paint
just so they entertain
like ghouls maimed of pain

But then you cry when balloons fly away
and the circus leaves an empty spot
Like sandlewood forests cut
Or native trees trampled
by the cattle-ness of society.
Eyes glazed as they graze for the green
And don’t even feel the killing they do with their feet
Stomping on the history that was here
Identities clear cut when the flag
Stabbed into the land that held them up
Like ancestor’s backs

Now you push me down cause I pass for black
I mean, look back
Or am proof that oppression is a fact
To this very day

Tell me in my face that racism is dead
Of course you won’t because that would bring up dread
in the shadows of your subsconscious
where white privledge sits in dark cloaks
in quiet ritual
Never he spoke cause the magician
rolls the dice
in the roll of your eye
when you see another fight between a white and local boy
Or an ice head breaking into a home
Or an accident that bled of alcohol

Don’t think that you avoided the fall
Continuing how you are
Judging that what goes on
has nothing to do with you at all

Cause history comes back to haunt
and the demons you thought were buried
have come back and revisited
the foundations of this country
Taking control of institutions
making sure the colored are still beat
by structural violence
The bricks too heavy
For the trampled to lift
Making sure the lifestyle you live
Lessens the food and water to their lips
Weakens their mind to rise above the hardships
Not imposed by lack of strength
to pull themselves up by the bootstraps
But because they are still enslaved
in factory mentalities
makin boots to keep status quo going
that make them think they’re just worth to work
shit jobs, with crap pay
Ice and drugs are then the savior
To keep them running the imposed
rat race.

Look around
and see the shivers you feel
Cause the ghosts are free
and haunting these streets
Does modernity scare you by remembering history?

But I shall still speak

of the stories in the skin
Untold underneath the shadows of racism
Where the psychology of the past
still dominates minds to keep a blanket
to hide the fear of stereotypes.

But they are false
and we need to be free
Let the ghosts ressurrect
When we help not expecting
to be benevolent
But listening
To the stories of families broken
Cultures misunderstood
Futures taken
because of pasts abused

Don’t turn away
Like during the slave days
Sayin those with dark skin
can endure the sun’s harsh gaze
while others can be sheltered
from the guilt and the pain.
The only way to free the ghosts
Is to look at them in their face