400 Years
Four Hundred Years
ago
human beings,
stolen from their home,
from their kinships,
from the beauty of their world,
from their families,
their lovers,
their children.
Four Hundred Years
ago
human beings
piled into the holds of ships,
shackled and abused,
barely able to move
stripped of their humanity,
denied their freedom,
humiliated,
often drowned.
Four Hundred Years
ago
humans beings
treated somehow
less than human,
like expendable chattel,
like mere property,
disposable, exploited, murdered
with impunity, with indifference,
with carefree and deadly violence.
Four Hundred years
from then until now
intervening decades
this insidious poison
spread through the generations
periodic massacres of innocents,
near genocide of
native americans
treated as nameless obstacles
to colonization and conquest,
bloodbath that was the civil war
hundreds of thousands of bodies
left dead on forsaken battlegrounds
twisted and mutilated wreckage
forged from an erroneous notion
of supremacy based
not on merit
not on reason or logic
nor justice
but on accidental whiteness
now faithfully eulogized and
solemnly remembered,
blight and contagion spread to other
hapless victims
Chinese
Japanese,
Hispanics,
Muslims,
Human beings mostly of color,
of difference
in outlook
in custom
in dress
in persuasion,
their collective sin
their unforgiveable inequity
the nature of their threat
to be born with
non-whiteness,
with gradations of darkness
no matter how slight
no matter how innocuous,
this overweening falsity that
forged so much carnage
that ushered in Jim Crow,
that gave birth to the
Ku Klux Klan and the
NRA and
Tea Party politicians
inevitably spread to other lands
under the guise of foreign policy
national defense
beneath the umbrella of justifiable wars
leaving millions upon millions dead
immense carnage
and grief
Korean and Vietnamese and Iraqi
and Afghani and Mexican and Filipino
mothers to grieve for their children
their elders
their families.
Four Hundred Years
and yet
this unspeakable terror,
this fearsome and unimagined horror
still persists,
some human beings using
power and wealth
to dehumanize others
based upon the color of their skin
and yet
mindless bigotry, hatred and
violence still
plague this nation
even in the twenty-first century
with all that science teaches,
with all that we know,
yet senseless prejudice is
sustained and nurtured
in spite of all that logic and reason dictate,
in spite of all that we understand as truth.
For Four Hundred Years
In spite of all that we know,
the killing goes on,
mothers continue to grieve,
justice is denied
unnecessary suffering roars through the land
in a hurricane of grief,
those who live on stolen lands
arm themselves
preparing for a conflagration
that they cannot possibly control,
those who possess inordinate wealth
callous to the suffering
indifferent to the injustice
refuse to relent in their insatiable greed,
this poison passed around in giant goblets
that touch the lips and infest
hearts and minds
with pure nonsense.
It has been Four Hundred Years,
It needs to stop,
this moribund and
dangerous idea of superiority
based upon the fallacy called race,
needs to be extinguished once and for all
not by the power of intimidation,
not by violence,
not by fiat
but simply and resolutely
through a transformation of ideas,
it is up to the people of this wondrous land
to teach the children and ourselves
what is fundamentally the truth
that we are all members of the same species
Homo sapiens
we share the same architecture
of body and mind,
the same panoply of
emotions and desires
the same capacity for love,
for reason and harmony
for logic and intellect,
for imagination and
creativity, inventiveness and
for art,
each and everyone of this
family of human beings
deserving of equal measures of
social and economic justice,
equal access to health care
to shelter
to nutrition
opportunity to thrive and to prosper,
to learn and to grow
without any fear of reprisal or
bigotry or baseless retribution,
all worthy of the love that mothers
naturally give,
of being embraced and included
without hesitation or reluctance
or trepidation
within the all encompassing arms of the
human family.
After Four Hundred Years
is this
really too much to ask for?
