Have you ever felt the reside of historical oppression on your skin?
And then forced to breathe the toxin in

Have you ever sat in a place where the ground rumbled with our ancestral rhythms?
(and yet as we grooved,
we danced to the beat of our degradation.)

Culture tainted.

Have you ever seen truth perverted by a lie?
Have you even seen the emperor naked
while the world bolstered his delusion?

Have you ever seen people pimp the name of the Lord
and propagate confusion?

Have you ever seen wisdom buried
in sight of vision- gleefully made blind?

Have you ever seen children sacrificed      
on the altar of convenience?

Have you ever seen nature co-opted
by pharmaceutical spin and greed?
Have you ever seen the line obliterated
between what we want and what we need?

We too…Possessed and …Unclean.

Have you ever seen pain and self-hate call itself
“being real”?

Have you ever seen another,
whose hue and features you shared,
only to be assaulted with words like “btich’, nigga” and “ho”,
and think Black Lives May Matter
but not our feelings, Yo?

Have you ever looked in the mirror and couldn’t see what you reflected,
because all you could see was
how far you were from the
mainstream Eurocentric normative projection?

God’s image and likeness

restrained and infected.

Have you ever seen so many afraid of others,
within the same human race?
perpetuating suffering and killing right in front of our face.

Have you ever seen a country lobotomized
under the guise of protection?
While the major horror lamented
was the powerful and their erections.

Have you ever seen beauty bleed
while vulgarity was exalted?

Have you wrestled with spirits that invade and negate?
Contaminating our essence with words, deeds, rhetoric of hate.

Have you ever dared to become unpolluted
Dream justice, while the nightmare kept you awake?

Have you ever wanted,
How to wash clean of this madness
for God’s sake!

…willing to be shaken to our core,
release the filth that inhabits us
no more.