Do you know the cost
Hatred, discrimination
Rot society
Licensing vile factions
To spew ugly rhetoric
We hear this danger
From the pinnacle to base
Brothers and sisters
Singled out for their difference
Treated as misfits…pariahs
Leadership for all
A political promise
Faded at “I will”
We’re racing to the bottom
Tethered to an ignorant
Explain your blindness
Your willingness to sell out
Friends and family
On the words of a blowhard
Who we now call President
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Round and round the story goes
One that’s as old as time
Where it stops nobody knows
Causing tensions to climb
These 50 odd years since civil rights
Have made so little change
Hatred between black and white
Festers like the mange
Fear of lynching may have passed
But fear exists no less
While walking the street they’re still harassed
No matter how finely dressed
Ask Sandra Bland or Michael Brown
Oh wait they cannot speak
Too many names buried in the ground
The future seems so bleak
Justify and deny all you wish
Your blindness it won’t erase
200 years by chains and switch
Like animals kept in place
Nothing has changed in modern day
Ask Eric, Tamir or Trayvon
It matters not what any of us say
Because either way they’re gone
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Laid to final rest
With a farewell and kind words.
Eulogies given;
The famous and powerful
Came to pay their last respects.
But is this enough,
We’ve been down this road before;
It’s paved with their blood.
Is this just more lip service
Paid to appease the people?
As the saying goes,
Actions speak louder than words,
This can’t be denied.
Maybe the edge has been reached
Finally putting an end to the hate.
Only time will tell
If these deaths have been for naught.
With man at the wheel
Anything is possible,
But I for one hope for change.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Anger–you can see it on their grimaced faces;
Marching, hands raised in civil defiance.
Neither curfew nor militarization will quell them
In the face of injustice.
What passes for authority tries to divert,
Maybe he took the “sweets”, maybe he didn’t,
Maybe he smoked a little weed,
Maybe jaywalking is a capital crime in the south,
Maybe murder is ignored when hidden behind a badge.
So much for civil rights,
So much for equality under the law,
So much for compassion and common decency.
He was eighteen and unarmed,
Of this there is no dispute!
Perhaps he wasn’t an angel…are any of us?
I have bent the law,
Maybe even broken it a time or two,
But I’m still here, breathing, smiling, growing older.
We can deny–
That racism exists,
We can deny–
That blacks are treated differently than whites,
We can deny–
That skin color matters,
But denial doesn’t make it so!
Changing laws do not change hearts,
And time does not necessarily heal…
These are irrefutable facts.
Behind closed doors we disrobe,
Taking off our suit of political correctness,
To reveal naked hate.
We spew the epithets of our fathers,
Who broke the backs of an unwilling immigrant.
It’s as though times have never changed…
And perhaps they haven’t.
The manacles once of iron are now invisible,
The whips of braided leather no longer leave scars,
But the pain, fear and displacement still exists
…In this twenty-first century.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Death of our future;
Skin color–judge and jury
In prejudice hands.
O’ the man he might have been,
Greatness he might have attained!
We will never know
As the blood pool will attest.
Our youth sacrificed
For their outward appearance
Instead of what’s in the heart.
This is pure hatred,
Revealing the blackened soul
Of years long gone by.
We thought we were above this
In one nation under God.
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Dom DiFrancesco 