Reconstruction Endgame

Reconstruction Endgame 

Those who live history are condemned to learn it.
Oh! snap your fingers Thanos and make half of all of this shit go away

I want to lose the half that had the lynchings and the chains
James Byrd Jr. in Texas
Trayvon Martin in Florida
(Stand your ground)
Eric Garner in Brooklyn 
(I can’t breathe!)
Cause of death selling loosies 

Church Burnings and shootings
Synagogue and Mosque Massacres
And don’t forget the high schools and The Trenchcoat Mafias
Then 
And yet to come

A long time comin’
Came and went.

The false hope and the misplaced optimismDon’t let them turn you into a Black Minstrel in Whiteface, Barrack
I want to hear you sing
Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen: the remix

But sing it like an R&B singer 
During this reconstructed Reconstruction 
Remind us how to have faith and hope and love
Because hoping IS audacious.
Call your debut solo album Stolen Legacy 3.0 the citizen years
And
Endeavor to persevere

Do we really have to live this time line
Or can our future be changed?

Let all the White girls sing  
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
And take a walk on the wild side 
Attend hot yoga classes in $200 leotards anywhere you want
Because 
Global warming is everywhere

Take off your pretty pink
Knitted kitten hats
And please don’t have 52% of you vote for a male finger fucker.
Your soup can reality shaped by
Facebook posts, Instagram and reTweets
Hope and Change
In this Reconstruction End Game

Death, walk on an ocean of blood
And sacrifice your children to achieve your ends
Kill affordable healthcare
What do you care?

You are old and will retire in comfort
Then turn to dust
In a universe rebuilt in your image

Turn the dreams into nightmares
And snuff hope out, oh! you retroactive abortionist
Protect the unborn but kill the fully grown
Pray to Capitalism and jesus™️
Hug the flag but kill the mothers
And veto UN resolutions condemning rape as a tool of war

Avengers Assemble!!!!!
The children of D.W. Griffith are marching on Charlottesville 
And in Neo-Imperial Coronations  
Rebirth of a Nation: the sequel 
Non-colorful costumes embossed with runic symbols
Illumined by tiki torches carried by the very fine.

But then, D.C. invented the dark hero-vers 

Someone tried to teach me this story when I was little 
But I thought
Who wants to learn this old shit
Teach me about Kennedy, and King
Or Malcolm, or Patrice Lumumba
Teach me about Mau Mau 
And Eldridge 
I want to learn how to say my name in Swahili
And figure out why our favorite musicians are all blind and wear dark sunglasses

Put us on television and accept us into colleges
I want to dance to Miriam Makeba’s Pata Pata 
And look fly in an Ivory Coast Dashiki 
My Afro glittering with oily Johnson hair care products
Then in this time line 
Someday I’ll hear a Black poet laureate recite:
And Still I Rise

But today if I took the Pulse of the Morning 
Today when congressional subpoenas can simply be ignored
Today when 400-page Mueller Reports can be summarized with four pages of lies
Today when Obama is the hope that dare not speak its name
If I took The Pulse of this morning 
It would be dead
Killed by the same stories I wouldn’t learn as a child

But those who live history 
Are condemned to learn it.

(Photo Credit: PBS)