PAD Challenge Day 29: Total No. of Blacks

PAD Challenge Day 29: Write a total (blank) poem.

Total No. of Blacks

Tell me,

How many blacks are

well and alive in America, right now?

How many made it into 2020?

Go ahead, give me your best

count by your ones or twos.

By any means necessary,

please exclude the

three-fifths compromise.

Go ahead,

count away,

do not forget the ones

standing next to you too!

I know, you do not know them,

but count them anyway.

Just in case the Census 2020 forget.

The qualitative and quantitative

research studies exclude them.

The white scientist, doctor, mathematician,

statistician, news, politicians,

teachers, leadership, and institutions

forget them after they take their position.

Go ahead.

Count them out,

while they are still alive, right now.

While you are adding up,

please, do not question our existence

or add our education, social class,

and insurance by the shade of our skin.

‘Cause looking at Crayola,

we are not really black.

We come in different shades.

But we are counted as one under

the breathing, teary eyed, and bloody days of

oppression, suppression, and depression.

Go ahead,

if you must, use your

fingers and your toes,

or any other instrument

that you may know.

Count carefully,

but do not ask about

our grandmothers’ high blood pressure,

our mothers’ infant mortality,

our fathers’ heart disease,

our first cousins’ asthma,

our second cousins’ stroke,

our third cousins’ weight,

our uncles’ cancer,

our aunts’ diabetes,

our sisters’ and brothers’ mental health,

our friends addictions and HIV/AIDs status,

if you do not understand the history

behind miscounting blacks thus far.

Please, do not ask, or

pretend to care like you care,

if you intend to violate

the Hippocratic Oath,

the Belmont Report,

and HIPAA while

short-changing social change.

D’ElegantOne

Photographer: Anonymous
Taken duing one of my art gallery visits Circa 2016