All lives matter But do they matter equally? In theory, sure they do But not so in reality The cry itself to uphold All Drowns out the strangled voices When they do finally rise just to fall By being pushed into the background Made to fade into the black ground Charred and scarred From the centuries of flaming hostility And their mere existence barred All lives matter Does not mean the same As Black Lives Matter Only you don’t feel the pain When you duly repeat the refrain A choir of casual ignorance—or hate With a belly full of blame To drown out the shame Of your default position On this board of life game A game for you, maybe But it's just not the same When your skin means you lose by default And only few gains are made All lives matter Is an empty phrase Meant to erase race While racism plays The same role it has always played white only means race, a color Black means that plus a unique American culture Your people can trace their ancestry To the time and the place When your surnames became And your music, religion—your culture remains But Black people cannot say the same In America, the land of some free And the home of the brave Enough to keep fighting in spite of the pain Forced to become a new culture of people And Black was the name that your ancestors gave To a diverse group of peoples When only hints of their cultures remained Because the rest were murdered and buried Carelessly in unmarked graves All lives matter But the system won’t care If the people who uphold and defend it Refuse to prepare Their minds and their hearts to accept This was rigged from the start And it’s rigged to this day When non-white skinned people Must a higher price pay Just to be here at all Don't celebrate whiteness Celebrate culture, the customs and ways Of the nation you're in And the ones whence you came But always recall When Black Americans look backwards Seeking roots for their culture Their vision is clear up to, not beyond The plantation—ancestral origins erased As par for the course of Manifest Destiny And white European supremacy, of course And it’s plain if you care to see it at all That looking forward looks too much the same Struggle, restriction, harm, deprivation—injustice The lives that they’ve lived since they came To this land against their will Yet you cry out still That saying “All” Includes Black people Who’ve never been included in justice at all Keep your heads buried in the sand at your own risk If you’re willing to risk it all On denial But remember Pride always goeth before a fall
This poem was originally shared on Phoenix Fire Press on June 01, 2020.
