Nothing could be more unlike

Nothing could be more unlike

 

Beaten, broken male bodies,

shot dead in the street for resisting arrest,

for standing unarmed,

for talking back.

Black BOY;

nothing could be more unlike

 

liberation. Twenty-seventeen, Libya host African,

migrant slave markets.

Auctioning off human life as merchandise;

a mere four-hundred-dollars.

Cheap. Any takers?

Free on record, free on paper,

but not by heart.

Caged in like animals,

and treated so;

chained up, bruised and preyed upon.

But their only weapon is to pray along,

silently,

as they lay dormant, close to death.

Skull battered by the baton,

eyes blinded with pepper spray,

blood soaked cotton.

Nothing could be more unlike

 

emancipation. Eighteen-sixty-five, slavery was abolished in the US,

abolished in England with the Slavery Abolition Act of eighteen-thirty-three.

Free by law, by right,

but black is still dirty,

still tarnished by name.

Slavery never died;

it was never abolished.

It is alive,

it is well.

Nothing could be more unlike

 

freedom.