Juneteenth 2020 (poem)

You died under the knee

Of white revenge warlords

enforcing imaginary utopian

hopes and dreams with

The reality of racial capitalism.

Carrot on a stick, the

White capitalists lure.

Conscripting black

And white working masses.

Selling the false narrative,

Commodifying black and brown

Dreams in endless spirals.

Promising utopias unleashed

Across the human spectrum.

But at the last minute,

Getting the stick,

The old switcheroo.

Siren songs sung by elites

That promise equality and justice for all,

That recording’s old saw goes.

Round and round on the

Ghetto’s gritty precarity turntable.

Cutting and stroking white fear of

Black revenge with tall tales,

Including your liberal
    sanctimonious ideas

Promoting calm and strategic
    organization.

Rage forward with striding feet,
    rebellion, negation,

Of white institutional racist capitalism’s

False and deadly utopia,

By any means necessary.

M Bean
June 2020