Photo by sarajuggernaut via Pixabay

Underbelly

Ré Harris
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read

Once upon the times you didn’t see,
in this land that pulls wool over eyes,
a tentacled thing followed
many of us home
and slithered its way inside.

Like a specter, it sifted in
through bricks, wood, plaster,
flashing its scathing underbelly at me
through the night, when all I wanted
was dreams outside the bull’s eye.

I wished the monster would go away,
though Mama said wishes couldn’t work better than
centuries of prayer. I wished anyway,
hard but mindful, in that gentle vulnerable way
you keep saying is The Only Acceptable One.

I made my voice soft as a baby’s sigh
and smiled, but the thing ignored my wishes
as usual, invading on, before startling at the teeth
in the smile in my dark brown face,
and crying foul.

I survived it’s sudden wrath and
woke the next morning from fitful sleep
shouting that I matter, my voice joining others
eschewing magical sweetness, our faces held high,
refusing to remain unseen, or blamed for fear.

You claim the high road, but I see that
our resolve is more than you’ll bear. ‘Never
meet the pushy thing’s power
,’ I hear you say,
with the same force it uses to pass through walls
and into the unauthorized heart of your dreams.’

Persons of color somewhere gave you permission
to believe yourself smarter than black people
who speak out or gather — someones somehow not minding
that White Judgment gave you license
to believe such a thing long before they did.

So you mistake yourself for one who knows,
listening only to yourself and perhaps your
much-mentioned wife and extended family through
marriage, people of color whose words speak for fewer
than the number you believe. They don’t speak for me.

Spouting from your ugly perch, you embrace
poisonous white heat and ignorance. And when
words are spoken from hearts you systemically
twist your mind against, you respond
as the evil sifting thing you claim to abhor.

This was painfully inspired by the white man (who likes to tell us his wife is black) who harangues black people on Medium for going about their writing, thinking, and being all wrong, because it doesn’t comport with how he wants our issues addressed or our lives expressed. He is one egregiously clueless, self-important troll among many.

Resistance Poetry

Verse as Commentary

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