When They Discovered Rome (Edward's 6/30)

When they discovered Rome
They played powwow
Instead of piano
Drowned opera
With rain-dance
Replaced the tower of Pisa
With totem poles
transposed cave paintings
On the concave of Sistine Chapel
Conclaves spoke messages of Animism
And myths of European cannibalism
Man holds no positions
Divine rights are primitive
And gold
Isn't worth more than Buffalo

When they discovered Rome
They bushed their face
With war paint
Wore moccasins
Like combat boots
Poisoned grapevines
Til each sip of red wine
Brought disease to 95
% of the population
Each Roman citizen
Was written in the census
With invisible ink
Stories of Da Vinci
Were told through oral traditions
As Mona Lisa begin to look more
Like Pocahontas
Each treaty ended
With the Greeks being moved
To the Island of Crete
On barren reservations

When they discovered Rome
The rivers of Venice turned red
And so did it's people



Cellmates with Jack Johnson (Edward's 5/30)

My sister-in-law
Is the latest housewife of Mankato
She balances checkbooks with child support
She can stand stable
On the seesaw of Black men
She used to bear children
Treats her womb
Like Obama’s inauguration
Alotta “niggas” attended
The swearing in of biracial babies
And I say “nigga”
In the most racist-miscegenation
Sense of the word
The same way her great grandmother
Would say “nigga”
With the taste of slave ships and whips
On her saliva

But I’m not judging my sister-in-law
For refusing to repent the sins of her father
Cuz I got a two-sided ancestry
That double-dated Klan and Panther rallies
So my sister-in-law doesn’t have to say “nigga”
The way she uses Ebonics
Offends me enough
Because Europe
Never had to sew broken Yoruba
Tongues back together
Her language will last forever
As long as America
Keep militarizing Third World countries

I can’t help but to see race
So she tells me “blood is thicker than water”
As if family history
And the blast of fire hoses from the 60’s
Are separate entities
For my grandmother
But my sister-n-law
Somehow seems to know my experience
From birthing babies with a similar
Skin complexion to mine
Says she doesn’t see color
But the backbone of the country she lives in
Had Chinamen building its vertebrae
With railroad tracks

And my brother would’ve been cellmates with Jack Johnson
For trying to get white women to jack his johnson
My brother would have never gotten
To take my sister-in-law to prom when
Her bloodlines were pure
It’s only when her first two Black baby daddies
Dump tar and toxic waste
At the base of her family tree
That her parents accept the Jim-Crow landfill of my brother

They gave him their blessing
So Madame C.J. Walker works with COINTELPRO
To infiltrate his wedding
Because he’s not supposed to get
His white woman so easily
Without first obtaining the Bluest Eye
So he won’t stop fucking his white woman
Until Toni Morrison writes a novel about him
Or atleast
Until his little brother admits
His wife loves him as a man
And not a Black one