Patricius

Is this country

that green to freedom?

          lack 

        B       p

                 a

                 i

                 n

is the cane white

liberate shun

stands on.

Real liberation’s hands-on

but I've gone color blind

from our nation's celebration

of a saint's passion.

Wanna see a

Pat trick?

Put your hands on a man, 

kidnap him,

disappear him from his land,

and then enslave him,

watch him escape

from those chains,

reappear again to ensure

his name is in the pages of

His story.

Sounds like a

black man's pain to me.

Is this country

that green to freedom?

That they don't understand

why a man needs 

to be celebrated, or

how a man

can live in a land

not with chains in his hands,

but with keys hidden in his words,

unlocking minds

that once locked him away.

Walking among the ones

who stole his freedom

not as a ghost haunting their guilt,

but as a prophet planting roots

where they had only sown stones.

But those were sham rocks,

because real revolutionaries 

can't be enslaved.

Is this country

that green to freedom?

That they don't see

the connection?

Between black and green?

Because I for sure see

why America lifts its glass,

why it drinks deep

from the well of our endurance,

Why it toasts to our survival

while still watering

the roots of our struggle

Not because it has

healed the wounds,

but because it cannot

ignore the miracle… 

how we, too,

turned chains into wings,

how we, too,

turned whips into wisdom,

how we, too,

turned cotton fields

into golden dreams,

how we, too,

SURVIVED, not as bitter

strange fruit,

but as the sweetest revenge.

Flourishing in a land

that tried to bury us.

Dancing to a rhythm

they once tried to break.

Loving in a way

they could never understand.