PAD Challenge Day 25: The American Dream

PAD Challenge Day 25: Write a dream and/or reality poem.

The American Dream

Oops! My bad!

I know you pictured
a white picket fence
around a single unit
of square feet with
three to four bedrooms,
two to three bathrooms,
with a garage too small
of a container to contain
equality, justice, and liberty for all.

I know a set of four paws
seems to have more human rights
than the footprints of your
babies running through
wildflowers in pink and blue.

I know the Whites have
more yellow in their smiles
and all your eyes witnessed
on this soil is a Trail of Tears
and the blackest Blues,
though you have flesh
that can split open to
bleed Red like them.

Sorry!

I know you keep thinking
you’re seeing stars;
wishing, hoping, and dreaming
that your stripes won’t look like
the ones our ancestors inherited
on their backs in the cotton fields
or behind the Magnolia tree in the mills,
but they got a chokehold on necks still
and gasoline to gaslight your minds.

I know since the slaves learned
how to read and our children could recite
the Preamble back 
to the social studies teacher,
that “We the People”, too,
had a dream to sample 
the sweetest American pie.

I know, you thought 
if we could make amends
with the Amendments for all men
to be seen “eye to eye”.
But even with all our
social classes and
degrees together,
our rights remain silent and acute
to their inverted right angles
of democracy and freedom
that’s barely a trending
slope or supplied.

D’ElegantOne


March on Washington 50th Anniversary
Washington, D.C Circa 2013

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