Monday, August 6, 2018

Forgive What?

This poem has a unique context. Yesterday at church, our preacher did a masterful job of speaking on forgiveness and how forgiving others is a mandate and a challenge.  Perhaps some day soon we can engage more around the process of forgiving, what it means, and what it does not mean.  All in all, it was a provocative and meaningful sermon.  While he preached, I wrote my own poem with included the words "you" and then a verb of mistreatment.

Then, I pulled out the journal again and the words that follow came out.  I owe the readers a disclaimer here.  I am not black.  My family members are not African American.  I do not have ancestors who survived the middle passage, slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the challenges of living while black, farming while black, or driving while black.

I have heard the stories again and again.

So it is with some trepidation that I offer the following.

Forgive What?
August 5, 2018


You stole me
            From my land and my people
            Sent me to a foreign land.           

You stuffed me
            Into the slave ships
            Harsh, hot, cold, brutal.

You auctioned me
            To the highest bidder
            Naked, demeaned, fondled.

You separated me
            From my wife, children
            From my children, husband.

You chained me
            And marched me to your plantation
            Placed me in shacks.

You raped me
            To satisfy yourself
            Though I was only an animal to you.

You demeaned me
            And my manhood, took my wife
            Called me nigger and boy.

You used me
            To make a dollar
            For yourself doing something you would not do.

You beat me
            Scalded me
            Salted me
            Chained me.

You reluctantly released me
            You wrote the Black Codes
            You used me in your tenant farm system.

You placed me in prisons
            And separated me from my family once more
            And profited from my labor.

You red-lined me
            Took away my vote and my education
            My dreams for a brighter future.

You segregated me and those I love
            Offered me separate but unequal
            Gave me water to drink from the colored fountain.

You called the cops on my children
            Murdered them beside the road and at the church
            Took my land.

You put bullets through my black body
             Left my mama without a son
             My children without a father.

Me?
Forgive you?
We?
Forgive thee for what?
Are you kidding me?

No comments:

Post a Comment