I Asked February

I Asked February

........

I asked February, why take a color designation? 

And it replied: So I could de-color the rest and mine,  

Still curious, I remained;  

Thus, the month whispered:

History has optical distortion faculty, 

Where colors are kept in captivity, 

Deprived of their inherent veracity;

Through a collective myth levying visual sanction,

Forcing each hue and diction into a one-eyed vision;

and lamenting: 

The journey from cotton-to-gold-to-steel,

Was a white-hued burden, 

No red –black- brown in between;

And this, history does so, 

Eclipsing the times of creation of colors: 

When cotton needed soaking in red to became white,

And white needed baptism in black to become golden; 

And golden needed stolen sweat to harden into steel;   

Giving birth to a lavish great dream;

Espoused in the plantation spirituals,

And the slave auction stall vile transactions, 

The agony engine of the industrial revolution;

Mixed in rhyme’, 

Out of many one - E-Pluribus Unum,

Warranted me in shame. 

....................................................

For Black History