Hatred breeds hatred
How do you think children learn
Taught in the womb…no
Children are blind to color
Until it’s been pointed out
You’re handing it down
Perpetuating the hate
By your words and deeds
You should hang your head in shame
…Ignorance is no excuse
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Black smoke wafts skyward
Baltimore the latest nail
To be pounded home
How many more before the
Coffin is sealed and buried
Repeated killing
Just a different city
Will we never learn
These–our brothers and sisters
Share the same constitution
But not the same rights
They are treated as lesser
By their skin color
Disgusting as it may be
This is our America
~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~
Faded asphalt riddled with glass and stone
Scorched deep black by disenfranchised frustration.
Called thugs and lawless, anger bubbles over,
But still nothing has changed.
The sixties are alive in well in the twenty-first century.
Civil rights are still just a dream for many
Though we’d like to believe otherwise.
So what! Segregation has been legally abolished,
The back of the bus is no longer reserved,
But what the law cannot abolish is racism.
It cannot regulate the prejudice minds of man,
It cannot extract it from our senses,
Perhaps blindness is the answer,
Plucking of the eyes from the skull.
What else can save this species,
It has been on this spiral for eternity?
Look at our history!
Enslavement, segregation, discrimination,
Poverty, lynchings, so little progress.
Yes, some of these have faded,
Replaced by polite prejudice,
But still nothing has changed.
Perhaps one day,
The ignorant will close their eyes,
Open their hearts
And realize that color is only
…Skin deep.
~~ 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 ~~
Dom DiFrancesco 