for black people who will never step foot in Princeton
Black life blooms
fades–ephemeral as weather
our skin a mask like cloud cover
Rage on for black death.
I sat in class as Dr. lectured on determinism and black fatalism
and permanence of racism and self-discovery
and the struggle that chokes, the rain that pours
Afro-pessimism
The resistence to the antibody of self-care
anti-black the whiteness that whiteness makes and remakes
The powers that be, the powers that choke
I wake up in the middle of lecture but my eyes were never closed
My own ignorance before me,
handed to me,
handed down to me
at the core
in the depths
beside the margin.
I stand
I demand and call
a change.
gone come
I sing of America
a melacholy drum beat shaped by the corps crying out from the ground
from the playground the b
desforpres 