I Was Supposed To Write a Love Poem

(Written around the time of the inauguration)

I was supposed to write a love poem

about hands and lips and thighs

but then I lost my words

I had no words of sweet nothings in my ear

and deft fingers running through my hair

no

i had none of those thoughts

instead I tried to find words that rhymed

with incarceration and literacy rates

I tried to find words that sounded like dream

but misspelled as scream

my not watching makes it no less historic

and makes me no less patriotic

neither does your attendance 

make you more

while children in your circles

still get tracked for prison

while you are chasing paper

they are chasing

the futility of their dreams

because we refuse 

to teach them who they really are

Malcolm asked us to remember

we say we remember Dr. King but

how can you remember that which you never knew

nobody will come for you

if you post from the media sanctioned speeches

but let's see if you still don't give a Huck

when he's standing over your bed on assignment

because you wrote

free mumia

free angela

Palante

or the like

tell me, where's the scandal in that?

putting picstitch pics of the Kings and the Obamas

as if that's the simplicity of black life

there are complications

teach the children the burden of being the Preacher King

don't excuse the philandering

but do discuss it

we want to buy our clothes from the same store as Michelle

but why don't we apply to the same institutions of higher learning?

oh, because you were watching Love and hiphop while

she was studying latin roots.

Doggone it. I was supposed to write a love poem!

Reverendsister's Ink © 2013