Forgiveness?

If you genuflect enough, they may let you live

but they won't forgive or forget what your grandfather did

or maybe your great-great granddad if anything at all

his white face all the evidence they need 

thick with the lynch-mob mentality they so hated 

when the mob came for them 

social justice translating into getting even

for Imaginary slights even they are uncertain ever happened 

and certainly, never happened to them

hatred churned up in colleges by bitter old professors

from previous protest movements

who ache to relive their former glories at your expense 

forcing you down onto your knees

demanding you express shame for the skin color

you were born with blaming you for slave ships 

one of their ancestors ever sailed on

making you beg for your existence 

knowing they won't ever let you forget 

what you never did in the first place. 

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Black Supremacists

 

 

If you stay quiet, they might ignore you,

Even if you’re white; this new holy order

Parading flawed martyrs like Floyd

Yet condemn you if you fly the American flag

Madness filling the streets of Portland

Or Seattle or St. Louis

With smoke and curses

In the pretense of social justice

They really mean as revenge

Crushing us in their greedy fingers

As they pound the walls of law

They intend to topple

As we stare down at the terror

 from the windows of the upper floors

stunned by the horror of humankind,

black faces and white faces

smothered in black masks

a new kind of KKK looking for

white people they can lynch,

caught in the frenzy

of their own misguided philosophies

as racist as the racists they hunt

black supremacists rather than white

looking for answers nobody can give

 

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Black face

 

We need to bring back black face

And not just for the laughs,

Nobody’s laughing when the mob

Comes out to our house and yells

For us to get out,

“We’re going to fuck your daughter, too,”

They say, leaving us only when I drag out

The semi-automatic from my attic

And I tell them, “I’ll shoot the first person who tries,”

But we know it can’t last

We stand out too much in the crowd,

Our white faces making us an easy target

For them and the local authorities

Who brand us as racist for our guns

Yet say nothing when the mob bears arms, too,

We need to blend in like the liberal whites do,

Become invisible, to look like them,

At least from a distance

So, they might pass by our door

Black face instead of lambs blood

To let these angels of death

From pick out some other family,

We need a mask of black

We can hide behind long enough

For them to crucify someone else.

 

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