Red

His hands are ivory.

Hard like Ivory.

Light like Ivory.

 

But they glow ruby as the sun of a new day rebounds across the yard.

 

The dull throbbing of red is everywhere.

His hands.

His face.

His eyes are shining with the passion of my pain.

 

He thinks he is winning.

 

The blood on me, is black.

Black like dark alleys.

Black like dirt.

Black, like the color of my skin I have been hunted for. Black, they call me.

 

Ebony.

Negro.

Slave.

 

His hair is rusty with my pain. My suffering. My blood. But he doesn't understand.

I have done what I have done for a reason, and one reason only.

 

So America will not be white.

White, like emptiness.

White, like a fake cleanliness.

White, like the murderers who hunt me.

 

We are not alone. My blood runs ruby across the pavement. I see ebony running towards me. Eight ebonies. I do not hear them. I do not want to. The early morning sun of Arkansas digs into my chest like a dagger, just like his did.

 

But it drives me forward.

 

I sit up.

 

The fight for what is right helps me stand.

 

No more pain. No more suffering. No more names. I will make my mark in this land, so that we are one. No more red, leaking across the pavement. No more ebony and ivory. Only one nation.

Reviews

Wow very powerful read here, So emotional {Nicely written}

[SpokenWord]

At first I didn't know where you were going to go with this, I thought it was a poem about the color red, silly me! One Nation it is a dream that many wish to see come true I can say things are different than when I was child here, they have improved from one generation to the next. Is it perfect yet, no but perfection is a dream within a dream to me. The more I read this poem the more deep it became and the more power and in the end you wrapped it up so neatly simply by saying one nation. Surprising write as it fooled me in the beginning loved it.