blowing

The voices on the wind speak to me

Sharing their mirthless whispers

Screaming their timeless secrets

The South-Easter filling their lungs

Daring us all to listen.

A tale of enslavement

Minds and bodies bound

An ancient story of tomorrow

Spilling from fetid lips

Sputtering and blistering

Swallowing the decayed truth.

I am a child slavery

Still remembering, feeling, reeling

From seeing the rusted chains intact

Amid the squalor and scorn

Of criminalized poverty

That is my brothers’ legacy

And the sons and daughters’ lot.