Prism
Trans
To move across or through
Parent
Father mother
Transparent
From one mother to another
And in tandem
With rebuke of questions
That if answered would damn them
They assume it’s obvious
It’s so clear
It’s so cold out
Remember your coat and lace
And Coates said “race
Is the child of racism
Not the father”
And we move farther
From reality
When we fail to recognize the boundaries Are as figurative
As the scores and decimals
We decimate
When we hesitate
To fight every inkling
And sprinkling of rain
That keeps this ark afloat
Justice is an arc that bends toward justice For whom?
It’s a tomb
That has buried and crushed
More than it’s ever carried
Or rushed to rescue
But we still climb this rock
And some still like to call it a refuge
Since dew drops still sit
On the tips of the grass
You can see through the water like glass But I’m perplexed at the reflection
Some may call it transparent
A worldview, a lens
But it’s clearly a knife
All along we knew it
As light sifts through it
White splits, divides all the colors
No two, no body can be united
The prism is like a prison
Hiding the truth
We were always equal to you
But if you don’t recognize the split When you see it
The missing, the dead
The threads of this tapestry
It doesn’t look like a tragedy
That’s clearly so colorful on screen Clutching a broken promise
Believing what they’ve learned is honest They don’t see a tragedy
The prism splits the colors
Without questioning how
Trusting what they know
They say
Wow
What a beautiful rainbow