Keepers

How quaintly they cry

About history erased

When their monuments

To hatred are removed

This is our heritage

Their new battle cry

Clinging to the banner

Holding power by fear

Politicians rally

Fear of losing the base

When we control their fear

We control their lives 

No more American dream

Just a fascist nightmare

Throngs refusing to wake

Sleepwalking through life

Sides must be chosen

The language must attest 

We group them categorically 

In a tribe of ‘thugs’ or ‘racists’

We ease our conscience 

We label them ‘terrorists’

We proudly proclaim our title

We are just ‘nationalists’

We are protecting our rights

We have become our possessions 

We have sold our souls

For a bastardized star and stripe

Giving our history a whitewash 

Giving our religion a new direction

Our protectors become our keepers

As we blindly follow the piper

We have abandoned

Our foundational ideology

“We, the people”

Have narrowed the scope

We ignore our crimes

And criminalize resistance 

We forcefully silence the oppressed 

With bullets and gas grenades

We have returned our state

And became a nation at war

Protecting the new god we serve

The cruel taskmaster ‘greed’

Property over people

Wealth over poverty

We never freed the slaves

We just became slaves ourselves

Like the bird in a cage

We have freedom 

As long as we stay away

From the gilded bars

We take our comfort

In this system we serve 

Like a frog in a pot

But the water is soon to boil

America was birthed

In a revolt against oppression 

Our masters were afraid

Our taste of freedom

Was out of control

Now

Not even a quarter of a millennium 

We have become our oppressors

Our noble experiment is ignoble 

We pad our resume with war crimes

We moved from a land of opportunity 

To a land filled with opportunists 

Seeking to build our dreams

On the broken backs of others

We worship the tokens

While trampling the ideals

We revere the rich

And marginalize the poor

We scream and stream unintelligible lies

To cover the cries of our victims

We vomit out the vitriol of our lives

Thinking our fear sounds like strength

Time will reveal us, eventually

As the jesters and fools we are become

Parading our ignorance loudly

Spoon fed fear by our masters 

It is time we shake off the shackles

For, though we have adorned them

And grown comfortable wearing them

They are still the shackles of slavery 

We have become the ‘house nigger’

As we work the new plantations of the rich

As we fill their coffers with gleaming gold

And beg for crumbs they cast aside

It is time 

To cast off the chains of identity labels

To break down dividing wall mortared with fear

To become ‘We’ instead of ‘them’ and ‘they’

It is time to understand 

The takers take from us all

The oppressors crush us all

‘We have met the enemy and they are us’

The dream has not been taken

It was never really offered

Well, not unilaterally 

The American Dream has a caveat

If we are to rise from this mire 

We will never be able

If we keep tearing others down

We will only rise, together

Cast off your shackle

Cast aside your label

Lift others so they may lift you 

Become again your brother’s keeper 

This was the plan

“We, the people”

To be the keepers

Not of wealth and riches

Not of power and dominion

But, to be the keepers

Keepers of humanity

Keepers of ideals

Keepers of justice 

Keepers of every brother

Keepers

© Ron Simpson Jr

August 29, 2020