By P.D. Battle

Every day awakened
is covered in an identity
that lifts and betrays;
A two-fold.
skin vs. soul tale,
beating the odds and ends
out of
self,
cramming the fragments
until they are
mosaic ancestral,
ebony shards of godness
seeking solidarity,
or a stained glass
that can catch their light
without the destiny of a cross.

An unreconciled hue,
in
visible rainbows
forgotten
origins
Audacious name,
tagging
infinince
branded apparition
crawling
through
treacherous duty
upright in
spired
while their throats
remembers
torture collars that gag
on constitutional half rights.

Commodity
sold
from auctions to jail cells
blocked,
from communities
redlined
school zones,
and civic services
half their worth
not even half the word;
Hood
turned ash white after years of pressure stoking in the fire,
diamonds,
blood stained
asphalt always
on the court,
track, field,
minstrel mimicked
in under-waged punchlines.

Good enough to
entertain
but never great enough to matter.

Fertile
soil finger-tilled picking
through fruited plains of itchy
white cash cotton
prisoners,
wards
but aren’t we all hostages?
Screaming to just be.

Bound,
in crude
oil pools
naturally together
good as gold
Kemetic
ink spills
on sheet music
And the spirit between them.
Every color aloud.
Beautiful
complicated,
mine, proud
Black.