Mommy

This piece was the first round qualifier for the Detroit Grand Slam 2016. Video of performance included.

They killed all of your people off, Mother.
They forced you to become one of them.
They tore you apart and covered you in iron armor
Steel chest plates with bricks layered to your hips.
Injected white paint into your soul
A soul that could once illuminate darkness of those afraid of dark
Those who imported pale people
To dilute colors too bright and wild to name
They tore the painted people apart and left them for dead
Unlike you, but much like you, Mother
They have been living unshielded since the day
they met you
But not even your iron armor nor your steel chest plates
Can protect you from perpetual pain of
Gluttons gorging on your bounty
the same hands will beat you dry
Beat you until the day you can’t provide for them anymore
They’re using you, Mom.
And they’re still using you.
Your heart was so cold when I was born into you.
Can you not feel anymore?
Are you so immune to abuse?
To the way they destroyed you to the core
That you couldn’t hold me when I was screaming for your oxygen?
I don’t think I was ever connected to your umbilical cord.

Because you’re still cold when I try to wrap my arms around your waist.
Maybe you’ve assimilated so much to white man’s ways
That you’ve stopped believing you’re the home of the brave

People are ripped from you
People are chained to you
Your green paved to grey
Your brown soil froze into white ice
The white man won’t let you love me
We the people
We the people
Am I not a person?
Can’t I promise my heart to you?
What happened to you?
Since when did you become so weak?
So weak that this pledge (hand to heart)
Became this salute (Bellamy salute)
What’s going to happen to you now?
The white man is relentless
Your iron armor and steel chest plates are getting so cracked and rusted
You have nothing
They’ve given you nothing...

But that does not give you the right to take anything from me
I am one of you
I am your child
And that’s a fact that they keep forcing me to prove
But you can’t even protect me from them
Because you’ve already given into their ways
You haven’t even learned from their mistakes
You’ve left me for dead
​
The people bound to you may be clawing at their bodies to remove white paint
But, at this point, your paint is incorruptible
Your iron armor and steel chest plates
Have become swords of bronze and bullets of lead
Your ice cold heart ignited a fire
Blazing hotter than your mantle’s core
Just look at you, mom.
You are one of them.

-​Hawa Rahman