Let me paint a picture for you
but don’t scream like Picasso
don’t like what you see
create a better
to-morrow
to-day
I color home
Brooklyn is my canvas
the paint brush
my thoughts dipped in pain
the strokes show struggle
of blacks trying to gain
while the government debates
immigration
greens alien to our situation.
Come color with me
bring your imagination
allow your dreams to cultivate our destination
As the painting took shape
the colors came alive
revealing
Kodak moments of black lives
imagine a pimp
be a father to his son
he wrote him a check
that read money can’t buy respect
a hoe
be a mother to her daughter
she showed her class
instead of shaking her ass
I’d laugh
watchin’ a drop-out school his bro
shouting “I dropped out but like ganja I still grow.”
Come color with me
bring your imagination
allow your dreams to cultivate our destination
As I looked at the portrait
portray
life around the way
the colors symbolized
the disarray
cause black women
don’t wear white to give birth
but black men
wear orange when freedom’s reversed
leaving the kids
somewhere
the future is gray
violence is near
books are far
if I could onlycolor in knowledge
I would sketch in college
trace dreams for black families
come color with me.
YOU ARE READING
A Walk Through Brooklyn
PoesiaA Walk Through Brooklyn is a collection of nineteen poems. It expresses the black experience from the vantage point of an African-American man. The poems deal with self-motivation, love, abandonment, and loss. The pictures painted through words will...
