FACADE REVEALED
FAÇADE REVEALED
NOTHING has changed—
I can still hear
Soulful groans, mothers’ cries,
As their children, ripped away from them,
Are taken for a “lil ride.”
Lynchings continue…
Disguised and revolutionized under a guise
Of justice, but look into Their eyes
And you’ll see
Smiling faces saying “Burn ‘em alive!”
Only now
And “burning” is suffocation,
And the “cross” is made of steel;
Horizontally laid, surrounded by glass
So They can congregate, and still watch
A color’d be killed.
It’s a drawn out process—
Approximately 6 years is what it takes;
For this type of death comes extremely slowly.
They drain the taxpayers dry,
While they say the appeal process is owed to me.
They have to make it look good!
They don’t want society to start having thoughts
That They’re snatching Us off the streets,
Doing to Us what was done to the Arawaks.
So what do we have?
Millions of dollars
Being drained from You for political gain.
Your money that’s supposed to be used for our appeals
Is being rechanelled to the State Treasury’s veins.*
Let’s go back a lil ways
To the time of “old” slavery.
Any enslaved person that resisted
Was made an example
To their families and all other potential resistors
When dismembered, with their body parts trampled.
The shock value of such a scene was profound—
Instant subjugation by the mere sight.
And they’re still being barbaric to subjugate a class
By this revolutionized dismembering of lives.
Comparing the past to the present—
Death Row inmates’ families
Are afflicted by the same psychological warfare.
And by it, these families are thrown
Into a state of bewilderment;
An oppressive tool to suppress the fight they have left.
So, the fight is taken out of the families,
While their children are taken for the slaughter,
And used for the accumulation of money.
While the government pockets those tax-payed dollars.
As our society’s morale evolved,
So did the system’s, superficially
So that Their means of profit won’t be taken away.
They’ve sugar- coated what’s ordinarily repulsive.
Executions and Lynchings, it’s all the same.
By Reginald “Omari Huduma” Blanton
* See my essay, “The Weeds that Bind”