2016 or, The Year We Asked Who Matters

I've found myself in quite the funk lately and have turned to writing to deal with it. I was inspired to create this poem after participating heavily in the protests in Charlotte. I hope you enjoy!

Black Lives Matter: three words that were born from a group of people tired of feeling torn apart by a whitewashed system sworn to serve the heart of diversity in this, a country built on black bones.

Now an orange man sits on a golden throne, spouting hate and sowing scorn, months away from being sworn into a place of power set in a proudly White House.

His supporters espouse a twisted view of race and call for making America great by scrawling a "new" message which states that ALL Lives Matter, crossing out Black and neglecting to see the irony, in the same way they say that they don't see color...

Obviously.

So the people carry the first message on signs they bring to protests, sick of unarmed black men dying, guns drawn by cops for some trumped-up crime, just because they were born with skin that is darker than mine.

Now they're forced to do time, perhaps for toting weed on their person in a dimebag, taken in by a******s who don't like the way their pants sag, who criticize them for wrapping their hair up in a doo-rag. Yet every time they proudly let their roots show, the all-lives-matter b******s think it's okay to go, "Oh, I simply love your afro!

I wish I had your hair..."

Welcome to Trump's America. Racism thrives here.

Author's Note

This is heavily free-formed--finished it after about an hour or so. I felt that the rawness reflected the subject matter.