Skit: My Mother Cries No Tears for Baltimore

My Mother cries no tears for Baltimore:
A work in progress.

My Mother cries no tears for Baltimore

She got no sympathy left

My Mother's mean eye's rest behind big thick rims

Her eyes made mean by years of violence

My Mother is nearsighted

She got no vision for the future and would rather forget the past

My Mother's words are metered

Carefully chosen to paint a particular picture like media does

My Mother has a black son and black brothers

but knows not of the struggle of brothers and sons

My Mother has lots of expensive ivy league degrees Phd'ed
She's well learned and heavily indoctrinated in the system of oppression
My Mother does not smile
Her scoul full of malice and self loathing
My mother cries not for Baltimore
She got not tears nor words left to impart on the Black community


This peom is obviously about how my mother feels about baltimore. 

I wanted to write something about what is going on in Baltimore right now. I wanted to talk about the conversations Black Americans have been having since they were actually freed and considered Americans ( meaning not when Lincoln "freed the slaves" because that tis all Bs but another matter entirely) I want to let you in on my dinner conversations with my parents. I want to let you know what my extended family talks about over the grill with beer in hand during thanksgiving. I am going to tell you what all the noise in the barbershop is about. Come on to my stoop and we can shoot the breeze. The title is My Mother Cries no Tears for Baltimore more as a statement of fact then as something that I hope will fit the poem. But I decided to call it that because the majority of people want to focus on the violence as a negative more than a unavoidable endpoint. Its a tool. All our lives we are told violence isn't the answer, don't steal, treat other how you want to be treated. However, we know from history nothing comes to those who take this path. So we must be strategically violent, taking what we want, and using others to advance our own means. So we riot, so we steal, so we abuse the power given to us by the government to advance our own agendas. I call this a work in progress because I am going to add to it as I learn. I will edit it and reword it as I find better ways to express and help you understand the situation facing my community. And I will leave this note down here.