Invisibility

Regarding invisibility in The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

I am from the blank stares

of people seeing but not seeing.

The blinking, the look-a ways,

a painful memory that

needs to be forgotten.

 

I am from the dead silence

from downturned heads and heaving shoulders.

I am from the glaring sun and the parched soil

(Dusty and crumbling,

It disintegrates between my burnt fingers)

I am from the “yes, Maams”

the “of course, Sirs”.

The grinding

The scrubbing

The bleaching

Even now I hear

the sobs of oppression

the cries of a society brutally wounded

by the whip of ignorance and

the shackles of hate.

 

I am from the tattered remains

of our fore-fathers

and the boiling blood of those

who suffered to end

the tyranny of the system that had

Tortured us

Betrayed us

Murdered us

As if our blood runs

darker than theirs

 

I am from the muffled shrieks

of us fighting for what we believe in.

Struggling to shove our way through

the crowds of violent oppression

the congregations of harsh hatred

threatening to destroy our very existence

 

I am from the evictions of the innocent

The thwack, thwack, thwack

of the blows permanently indenting our backs

now dripping with fiery blood

leaving scars that cannot be cured.

 

I am from the stillness

I am from the faceless horrors

of change and justice

that haunt the respected, the ignorant

 

To them, we are invisible.