What does it take?

Sometimes the beauty of you
Overwhelms me
And I cannot breathe
Sometimes the sickness and fear in you
Overwhelms me
So I cannot move
Sometimes there are movements
Within the silence of the people
And I am pulled in
Twenty directions
Wondering how I will hide my multiple identities
Until I realize they only
See me in the oversimplified, stereotyped way
That is so common to us
And I know that
All your mistakes are my mistakes
All your pain is my pain
All your truth is my truth
There is no separation
But you do not seem to care
And I appear indifferent
Because reflections are intact and
I am you
The omnipresent cliché
Running itself through layered thoughts
Voices haunt us
Fact and fiction follow us
Strung out on denials of so many colors
We struggle slipping,
always falling and
Never landing.
Laced into the stories and historical reality of
your people and my people are abundant tragedies
The trajectory spinning into uncertain future
Now that America will get the first family of African descent into
The whitest of White Houses
Will we finally learn to love each other on a massive scale?
Never before thought possible
Or is a hollow political victory just that,
Vapid in its success?
Will it take grassroots efforts
From the top down will it work?
Or from the bottom up?
Which direction does love flow from if not
Every single one
Can we look at each other on the street now
Without fearing deep rooted prejudice
And ignorance?
Or does it take more time?
Does it take more
Justice?
Does it take more
Vision?
Does it take more
Spiritual commitment?
Does it take
More
Consciousness?

tell me

Race tells me nothing
about a person
that superficial predisposition
that roll of the genetic dice
that gave you curly locks
that pigment in your skin
tells me nothing about the state you're in
this imaginary box
this quick to write you off
easy to categorize
leading to social demise
this way to subdivide
makes me so sick I want to hide
from the value you put on race
tells me so little of your identity
yes I see you're different from me
but much more is what we have in common
yet sadly this imaginary category
comes with a twisted long story
the cause of legal lynching
reason for vast discrimination
I know it's hell people been facin'
and i stand walk live breathe
benefitting from generations of white privilege
and still I assert
race tells you nothing about a person
it might be controversial to say
I had no rehearsal today
schools indoctrinate in the way of hate
so I avoid sweeping generalization lies
which come now as no surprise
and what if we lived in a world where
the way we describe each other is by
our individual definition of God
or higher/deeper power
or the way she reminds you of a flower
what if the way you introduce him is by
the name of his favorite song
or how she stays so strong
and you admire that
or by the similarities of her to a cat
Race tells you nothing about someone
tell me
what makes you
someone?·