Scrubbed rubbed the wrong way
And left hung up to dry
Blown away in the wind
Treated like a leper
I wasn't perfect but I tried
Treated like a sinner
Condemned sentenced
Feeling small
with no judge or jury
When I hadn't sinned at all.
Justice needs moderation
Voices' dialed-down modulation
When the mob screams for blood
The Rule of Law's dragged through the mud
IT’S RUBBED ON A DIAMOND
If you rub the rock the wrong way
The rock is stronger than hay
The rock can crumble, if it’s rubbed on a diamond
If you rub a dirt clog on concrete
If you place it under your feet
It’s more than crushed, smashed, such a crash
Like rock can crumble, it’s rubbed on a diamond
I can wash the clog away, with rain water
I can take the garden hose turn on the faucet
All the mud, all the clogs will dispensed disintegrates;
4/15/18
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr.2018©
We always gotta give America
her ego massage
Put cucumber visions in her eyes,
gentle finger her a comforting mirage
Lady Liberty likes you to give her
a righteous back rub
Tell her how beautiful she looks,
and how much
she's adored and loved
While her children gives your children
the Ugly American hate snub
Telling them to go back to their dung holes,
for they all be deplorable beetle bugs
But the ones she truly shuns
are the bastard black raisins in the sun
Those dark sardines who were tightly packed
in a dungeon cargo hold
on a profiteering, merchant slaver run
We always get rubbed the wrong way
We always labor overtime with low pay
We always get the smiley eyes and empty wage raise
We get the hollow words and the vacuous handshake
We receive the taser kiss on the face
We get the welcoming police bullet embrace
We receive the penitentiary guest place
We get the bare minimum assistance everyday
We always get rubbed the wrong way
We get the promise salt rubbed in our wounds,
from 400 lashes of yearly neglect
Which is the cruelest massage one could ever get
And all of this time I hid behind your beautiful brown eyes.
The way they drew me in soft brown.
I found no place safer.
Protected in a memory of lashes.
Delicately drawn,
My new favorite color.
I no longer saw in black and white, deep shades of gray.
What I found was a blanket drenched in warmth.
A warmth I longed to be apart of.
Colored in brown I laid still.
Hoping that you wouldn't notice in fear of being rubbed out.
In fear that you question how I got there and you'd rinse me out, your eyes once again clear.
Rid of the nuance that blocked your view of everything else.
The one thing that would never leave your eye.
The memories shared between you & I
Rubbed out
I stopped at a low stonewall
on my slow progress
saw before me a landscape painting,
ten sheep and twelve lambs.
I thought who that painter might be,
a sudden blur in the air,
when the picture cleared there
was a mare and her foal
five sheep had disappeared;
the painting looked better,
but I didn’t linger,
I wouldn’t like the artist to
think I was a part of his picture
wanting to erase me
for the sake of the prettiness.
of the landscape