By Jewell Prim
This dirt is rancid with tears
It stinks
Flowers were never meant to bloom here.
These lives were forced to give too much here.
Give up the right to a beautiful home,
One that is perfect for casting roots,
One that would let them
Plant seeds
And watch those little children go,
Watch them grow,
Run!
In this DIRT,
This dirt is sticking
In a way that’s different,
But recognize that it is the same in many, many places.
This dirt leaves the cancer in you.
You’re tracking around medical bills you can’t afford,
And smelling the taste of the death
That is dwelling over you,
You,
And your neighbor’s heads.
Why
Didn’t they tell you this was BAD dirt?
Why didn’t they tell us?
That this foundation
Was built to harvest thorns,
And not daisies.
That the happy home
You were promised
Would cost you the life that you have every right to?
Why aren’t you listening?
Why aren’t they listening?
Cant you see it?
LOOK
Look
This dirt…
Maybe this death is in a language
You’ve never heard.
I guess this would never
Be the insidious dirt
You were given to make a house a home.
Your dirt would never be my dirt.
Ain’t that something?
huh
Is it weird to say that all dirt
Should be equal?
That everyone deserves to live,
In a place where the land they stay on WONT
Kill them?
That just as you are important,
I too,
We too,
THEY too are equally important?
Is that a foreign language
Too?
What does it mean
When your government kills you,
With deathly dirt?
Do they not care?
Who do they care about more?
Why, maybe they’re mistaken!
Once again,
They think,
That this dark and deadly dirt
Is supposed to be matched,
With our dark and beautiful skin?
My ancestors didn’t die,
In this VERY LAND,
By the hands of slave masters
For my people,
To die today,
By the hands of this poisoned dirt.