Privilege

I get to pick what I want from life

Like my ancestors made

Beautiful black queens and 

Powerful black kings

Pick cotton in the

Bone-cracking heat

Blood-draining oppression

"Oh but that's in the past"

They say

As if beautiful black queens

And powerful black kings

Aren't picking up their sons' dead

Bodies off the streets

Bone-cracking bludgeons

Blood-chasing hounds and

False protectors

They don't ask for my

Privilege

Just equality

Just admittance that there isn't any

They are just asking for equality 

But we'll say little black boy was

Asking for it when we

Fire warning shots in his back

The beautiful brown backs

Of boys whose names

I'm unwilling to invoke

Unwilling to soil with my

Desperate tongue

I will not make them into ghosts

Trying to make you feel

The weight of what we have done