Monday, January 28, 2013

What is White (poem)


What is White?

Like a single bacteria cell in a wound
It presence lingers like a raging infection in a festering wound
It swells with the pus of shame and humility
It’s pestering presence permanently visible and exposed to the world

This is not a coat of red-dirt
Nor a bronze gift from the sun
This my skin
An unsanctified mélange of Privilege and prejudice
Of Purity and damnation
Of the most Pristine White and the filthiest black

By what laws of nature must one dominate the other?
Why is it that the black overpowers the white within the blood and flesh of man
But among men the black answers to the white man’s whips, the white man’s laws?

What is white?
White is the perfect ratio of egg whites to egg yolk in a soufflé
Too much yolk weighs like a burden
Suppressing the soufflé in eternal deflation
Never obtaining the glorified texture of an airy, white cloud

Those few fateful drops
Marking me for life
Never able to completely wash away its stain

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