turning on gil
Turning On Gil
It was to my amazement
that those white men and women graced me
with precious titles such as
“trailblazer, educated ”
suddenly the harsh weight of my forefathers
with backs scarred from bitter resistance
and tounges split in half to prevent its revolutionary spread
and the nannies who entered hell
remembering that Jefferson
with his unbuckled trousers
sat upon my back lifted off
my clean mulatto shoulders
And into articles with talks of ‘scholarship’
An abroad trip
and graduate submissions
—all smiles for that good negro.
With a grimace
I will take these blood-soaked
pennies, dimes, dollars,
loans, stipends,
anything to fund the calculated violent ripping and digging
to discover
what you did ruthlessly, unending, for generations
so that when I finally became unaware
that my scholarship is another slave ship
Replacing everlasting physical dread
journeying closer to an academic plantation
where I caught tons of ‘sense’
clutching my whitey sealed documents
gratitude in my eyes
I can now walk forth with confidence
that we have overcome
