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there is a rage
and a despondency
that doesn’t belong
to me

my privilege
as a male
white passing
expatriate benefiting
from everything
the dominant white
culture has to offer
makes me moot
or at least it should.

i lay no claim
to the palpable pain
present in communities
who cannot afford
performative alleyship
because they fear
for their lives
and the lives of their children,
suffering from cross-generational
post traumatic stress disorder
for simply being black
in a country,
a world
that hates black.

what other word but hate
can any one use
who has ever opened a history book
and understood even on a surface level
the concepts of:
colonialism.
capitalism.
cross atlantic slave trade.
the black codes
jim crow
colin kaepernick,
i leave you dear reader
to fill in the blanks of this history,
and lest you think hatred
is purely an american export,
take a look at your history.

there is a rage
and a despondency
that doesn’t belong
to me

i can barely
assign it a name,
shapeless
and heavy
it cannot fit into
this poem
which is really
just a failed
exercise sandwiched
between
(white)
guilt and saviorism.

we are so far
from justice still,
so much so
that it’s uncertain
we even know the
meaning of the word.   

there is a rage
and a despondency
that doesn’t belong
to me

but I have no choice
but to sit with it
and carry on
with the work.