Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Rahsaan Thomas

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

                

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience.

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, explicitly condones or implies a call for violence, etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post. 

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Institutionalized: One Bad Apple
by Rahsaan Thomas

All men are created equal, that's true indeed

But the constitution still isn't up to speed

3/5 of a man, they used to enslave us

2017, 1/3 they mass incarcerate us

Why do they hate us?

N.H.I.

Poverty and skin color why?

They just let us die

No Humans Involved

The case may never get solved

Revolvers, revolvers

And now one is pointed at me

Police ain't never where they are supposed to be

While they do donuts for lunch 

One Bad Apple spoils a whole bunch

Shots go off, my little brother goes down

He looks human to me as his blood splatters the ground

We got good grades in school

We never carried no tools

But when you're young and Black

That's that--all the police think they need to know

Jaded to how the streets go

They let the heats blow

And now I'm infected

Because my hood ain't protected

Loopholes held open by the NRA

Make it easy to get guns to me

Armed and ready it won't happen again

Not to none of my next of kin

But sure enough two try

And sure enough one dies

By the gun in my hand 

And my determination to take a stand 

But am I standing in the wrong place?

Racing in the wrong race?

Surviving gangbanger caught with the gat in the palm of his hand

They let him go like he part of the plan

Part of the clan

And like they one if given a sequel

Is sincere enough to uplift his people

Even though they found both their guns

In Iraq they found none

This ain't no riddle,

They weren't armed with skittles

I'm so sorry I killed that man, that's square biz

But if it wasn't self-defense, what the hell is.

George Zimmerman... Really?