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?