Why should I have to forgive you
when you took me from a land
where I mattered?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you bound me in shackles
and dispersed me around this world?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you held me in servitude
that created wealth for you and your
descendants?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you kept me in this bondage
for two and one half centuries?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you created an amendment
that placed me back into an act of
indentured servitude for any
infringement of a (policy) law?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you put a noose around
my neck, and I became a strange
fruit hanging from a tree?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you deny my children a
school system equal to a school
system for your children?
Why should I have to forgive you
when I wanted to vote I was beaten,
threatened, and killed for the right to vote?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you red lined me in where
I should live?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you amended an Amendment
that bars me from bearing arms?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you introduced heroin into
my communities?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you bussed me to all white
schools instead of busing your
children to all black schools?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you began your campaign of
the war on drugs?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you have always marginalized
or disenfranchised me?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you encourage me to get
out of poverty via entertainment
for your amusement?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you have made me out to be
the bogeyman (villainized)?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you have flooded my communities
with cocaine?
Why should I have to forgive you
when you keep enacting policies
on top of policies that has one in
four Black men incarcerated or on
some type of supervision release?
Why should I have to forgive you?
My caregivers told me to remember
that we all come from one man and
one woman, who created many tribes
and nations. We are not to despise one
another, but we ought to get to know one
another.
If there is one thing the -isms of
philosophy has shown me is the “ought”
in a person’s life is more subjective
rather than objective.
So, did my caregivers have it all wrong?
Tell me why should I have to forgive you.
