The Lens of Privilege
Long has the lens of privilege been easy to look through,
So long I know not how they were bestowed.
An interminable weightlessness, despite an incessant, insidious thickening day...by day... by day...
A seemingly divine lightness, no doubt some believe it so,
Layers aided or added by woefully misguided children, adults, teachers, politicians, media, and even - churches.
Despite the American promise of progress, the lens trudged on;
Stronger, Better at blurring the margins, not that I noticed much.
Better? Is that what I would call it?
A polarized lens that seemingly skews daily reality like a funhouse mirror at the carnival,
Though there is nothing funny about this lens in my house.
Decisions, judgments, relationships -
A whole life built in darkness, a darkness of lightness or whiteness.
But please do not worry for me,
An American darkness of whiteness is daily destroying lives and generations.
Careers denied, benefits deferred, educations failed, prisons filled, and parents deported,
Obfuscated somewhere between veil, and lens.
Wearer be warned, the heft and purview of the revealed lens might be intolerable.
In them, recognize the wanton disinformation.
In them, witness your inhuman indifference.
In them, discover the ill constructed self.
In fury, I break them and break them and break them,
And the redacted lights from the shattered lens are blinding.
Shards at angle reveal sins of calloused thought or ignorance that shred being.
Unfazed, other slices blind as before.
And some specks remain to highlight that their injustice will always remain.
I break them and break ‘em and break me,
But the lens proves it cannot be deconstructed in entirety,
Not in this person, and likely not while this person lives.
I brake and break them and I break again,
Because if I toil through the tangle,
Then that generations might not be divided by the ignorance and our ignorances.
Then that America might begin again the stroll toward moral development.
Then that we may be
Unencumbered in the pursuit of equality,
Without cynicism in the demands for justice,
And abounding with unbridled empathy.
Then that this nation may heal and
As one we may ‘just love’
- Everyone.