The New Majority

Thu, 04/03/2014 - 23:25 -- Damsel

Have you ever been liplocked? Not romantically,

But has your mouth ever been a bank.

Your teeth safe-bolts to an iron door.

A room with no windows.

Your jaw wired.

Do not be alarmed, this is what you’ve been taught.

To keep your wordly transactions captive.

“Be seen not heard child.”

Otherwise they’ll notice the treasured truth that coats your tongue and label it weapon.

Verbal aggression that needs to be silenced.

Tamed.

 

They want me to be quiet and grateful.

“Few have the opportunity to have their futures dictated for them.

To be educated in moderation.”

All we know is limitation.

How skin-tight the word minority feels

When you’ve lived your whole life seeing people who look just like you.

I wear minority in my pigment.

Because of our shades they think we accept being kept in the dark.

My skin tones resent this one-sided conflict.

Melanin that screams in protest.

That do not embrace passivity.

Demand attention.

To be seen as a potential and not statistic.

 

My mother sits at home folding into herself.

She is a fraction of who she was yesterday, capsizing.

Taking in less and less each day.

She is a shrinking woman.

She tells me not to become her.

To expand and envelop.

She tells me “knowledge is power and that kings never give the people power to fight back.”

 

I am not trying to start a revolt.

But an awakening.

 

Minority children that will soon live with eyes open.

That know many think their anger is industrialized.

But also know traditions can be broken.

Paradigms can be deconstructed.

To be wary of Indian Givers who sell promises as pyrite

When we deserve gold.

I want them to know they are shouts,

Pin drops in an empty room,

Thunder at 2:00 a.m.

That if given the chance they can disrupt the monotony.

That their volume is not defiance.

 

I wish I could place them on the tip of my tongue like lethologica.

So that every time I speak it is them you hear.

 

“Not everyone is against you child,

I am like you.

But not all of them are like us.”

 

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