The Color of Water

Well, the blacks are obviously criminals
And those asians are oh, so polite,
The latins can pass once the accent been slashed
So damnit, let’s all just be white.

Cus world music ’s white music like jazz was
And white hip-hop’s not hip-hop, it’s rock
Good neighborhoods are were the melanin is far
And bad one ‘swhere peoples ain’t bright.

So let Irish be Irish no longer.
Jews don’t care about Torah or Law
Sicilians are tanned and the Nordic’s are bland
And Egyptians are proof and South Africans too
That at base we are one with no culture or tongue
Cus it all just evolved like the science involved
and each land was a rung and each thought at end comes
to perfection, a blankness, all white.

Be the color of water when anything solid seems to disturb the new tide.
It’s the color of ice when dot on a height says no snowflakes more unique then I.

It’s the steam on the mirror
Between you and a face
made of off-yellow indian arab ancestry
million earth light-years made dark matter mass,

and a cell full of dye,

and a thought made of glass

that’s a fragile and crystal as narcissist pond
and the water condensed when your cleansed and embalmed
in a fog made of light
son of Canaan, son of night
son of God who is white
cus he must be.

Make me white just like heaven and Reagan,
White like tofu fried chicken breast milk.

White like gun in your hand
and a brain make of silk
and a last gasp of light like the sun.

__________

The lastest in a series of poems about racial identity that have been banging around my head lately. With all the Reverand Wright stuff swirling around in the past couple weeks (is there anything that guy said that EVERY white liberal friend I know haven’t been saying since ‘01?) I’ve found myself more then a little preoccupied with the idea of deconstructing race. For the record, I don’t black is very useful term either and while I have heard of the book of the same title of this poem, I have never read it. Nothing else to say but that…I’m slowing coming out of a fog this week.