Home, and this is what I've realized -

We were spoiled brats in Africa.

Instead of seeing poverty through a screen

in our plush living rooms,

we saw it from behind a glass wall.

Like onlookers at a zoo,

peering into the monkey cage.

Look at them,

look at them.

See how they walk,

see how they play.

How strange the way

they look like us –

some far removed ancestors

(or are they nearer than we’d like?)

Reach a hand out to touch –

the cool wall,

the freshly scratched

and scarred face of disparity –

The black and white picture;

the kind that reminds you it isn’t really real,

(Isn’t it? It isn’t.).

That far away,

that long ago,

to take us further away,

farther ahead

of

The Others.

That lowly brand in white supremacist history –

a history long and old and presently unraveling –

that story of black and bad,

and white and good –

the Archetypes that carry Culture on their backs,

refusing to let it walk on its own

capable feet.

It wasn’t that One

was better equipped than

The Other.

Simply differently.

Unlike the stories Archetypes tell,

the bad guy,

according to Reality –

the meaner man,

the crueler hand –

He always wins.

He always gets the say,

he forms the ways.

Declares math and money

our gods and our ancestors.

And like Religion,

he’ll always deny how he came to power –

"Through logical persuasion!

Enlightenment and progression!" –

turning a cheek to the meeker and milder –

the people made with blood –

with Life –

the same as others in the wild;

the kinfolk of dirt,

the ancestor of Love,

the mother of humanity.

Crippled with his greed,

he seeks to spread the disease

that left him deprived and depraved –

(the enslavement to Death,

in his mirror is his grave,

in his chest beats the clock) –

He’ll spread the hatred and call it honor;

teach violence and call it order.

He’ll give money to greedy hands like his

and call it charity to the needy.

He’ll destroy and call it progression;

kill community and call it capitalism;

start wars and call it religion.

The incurable, deplorable disease –

globalization’s airborne pandemic –

with Western origins and no vaccination.

Spread by way of rape:

Matron of peace and unity,

strong as the baobob tree,

left to the callous hands of

an ax’s maker and wielder,

A monster with sadist hunger.