March with Me

March with me

Lace tight your shoes with solemnity

Pressing on and ploughing through resolutely

Echoing footsteps just a spitting distance 

From 1619 to 2020 

A stormy walk the plank endurance 

hunkering down spirit sick 

deep in depths of persistence

 to the everydayness of lamenting 

another blue plague Of Black Death resistance 

To unshackle any chains of oppression,

any chip off that old block we must question 

Freedom and equality 

Held down handcuffed and suffocated 

Knee-deep in the big muddy

300 years under legalized brutality

Depicted that black is the lack 

of a true human hue

 and brown is beaten back 

black and blue as their due 

While shades of might without color of character 

autocratically rule

Strung up willfully by timeworn superiority 

and with the whip hand forcing obedient futility 

Lashed and labored without gratuity 

Only payment due was pain 

Backs broke under the weight 

of merciless Nationalistic gain 

that chained many for years 

Squeezed much wealth and pleasure 

from all the blood sweat and tears

 Reaped,raped muscled and hustled 

out of our inner treasure 

A renewable harvest of black looted booty

Stolen and summoned day and night  

to hard work at the lorded ravagers leisure

Those who came to be American unwillingly 

Robbed of their families and identity 

Built this pick-pocketing fraudulent

 plundering nation whos covenant 

Is profiteering and piracy not democracy 

We  were not worth 40 acres and a mule

But we were Americas best crop 

 Along with the predatory uprooting

land larceny of planted fields of white cotton,

our budded youth too was picked,

sold down river and marked for resale 

The continued flow of our blood 

was their gravy train 

Our worth was given on the house

hammered out from the gold of our soul 

Melted down to subjugate and control

bankrupting our bodies and minds

 to steal our citizenry

Arraigning us guilty continually

 Justice abused and confused 

 by the complexion of pretentious favorability

March with me 

Back to the ballot box 

Unshackle the locks

 on the people’s legislative door

Remove the bluster, bile and bull 

From all who muster for more 

While backhanding democracy off the floor 

Step up from systematic cut throat poverty 

Strapped and beggered low

Down at the heels weary 

and poll taxed into obscurity

Stay firm on your feet without retreat

Let’s get our rightful standing started 

steadfast and true hearted 

for mercy and humanity

In a government that has far to go

Let the race baiting and lies

bite the bullet and not embed them 

In our fleeing backs and pleading eyes 

Reparations only begin to amend when

 equality opportunity and civil liberties grow 

Nothing else will add up to all we are owed 

March with me

Moving forward with progress afoot 

Let’s advance our children’s reality

Where their ethnicity is not a liability 

And diversity Is a untroubled continuity 

Based on our unique individuality 

That is motivated and generated by unity 

And justice is a comfortable dependability 

That upholds all our people equally free

History marches alongside us 

Let our feet today have upstanding applications 

And our time here to not build any more 

monuments of conquest, bigotry and mistrust 

That scar the land and hearts for generations 

-MLH