WHITE Noise.

WHITE Noise

White

plates clatter.

Mom is in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner,

she never seems to sit still.

Dad sits with a smile,

wide as Lake Superior.

He’s happy,

belly out,

like he was watching Ohio State play Michigan State.

He’s happy because

he has lived up north all his life.

In a small town, all

White,

all the

same.

Same concerns, same

mundane

small town gossip.

Years of listening to stories, and years of listening to

Mom worry about Sunday morning plans, errands, new hair cuts, and floor plans for her new kitchen.

Years of

Dad

telling his stories

at the head of the table

in a proud, captivating

voice.

Sitting at the

dining room table,

the one I sat at

all my life. I look around at

Everyone’s meal,

half eaten,

on

Mom’s,

Mom’s

dinnerware.

My plate is still untouched. My

silver spoon,

undisturbed.

I

Hate

Faking

A

Smile...

My dad’s rebellious stories

probably still would

make me laugh,

if I could listen… but my thoughts

are ringing

******inmate calling*******

My mind is somewhere.

Far from that dining room.

Issues of this small town,

uppity world are

trivial.

How can y’all just turn your head?

And look down your nose?

They sit at a table discussing all this White Noise, instead of

major injustices and inequalities

so much suffering and pain.

How can you smile in your mansion when there's so many

with their lives abruptly taken.

“Where’s your boyfriend been?”

“Still dating that black boy

from Lansing?”

“It’s only skin deep you know.”

We get visits twice a week,

but how would you know?

You wouldn’t understand,

because you think the world is

expensive vacations, which dress fits the occasion and running errands.

Internalized

anger.

No voice ever shouts out.

I just nod my head,

and bite my tongue.

Yet here, where my words can scream

I am

raw, I am free

to sing to those who never let me

be me.

I am sitting in the back of a beat up

2002 Jaguar, parked on the westside,

the trunk held shut

by multi colored

bungee cords.

Dents in the driver’s side door.

The rear view mirror is cracked down the middle,

they might be in for more than 7 years of bad luck…

I inhale,

and his car smells of old leather and smoke.

A familiar smell. The inside is filled with ash

and stained homework papers, and old gum wrappers.

Tonight,

my face illuminated

by the flick of a light blue bic lighter I keep in my purse.

I pass the lighter smoothly

between my fingers like a batan, fidgeting

thinking.

I hit the blunt,

I lets the smoke rise up all

around me.

I am submersed in the feeling of

Insensibility.

pass.

I am so quiet, the white girl

sitting in the backseat.

A girl who vanishes

with the fading

smoke ribbons.

I have grown so silent over the last few years. Thoughts creep

through my mind that I want to scream out,

yet

the white noise;

her Mom’s Mom’s silver spoon, clattering against the white plates

try and drown my words out.

The lighter illuminates my cheeks,

summer nights,

missing my man in the front seat.

Depressed,

How can people sleep

knowing that

if they just look under their nose

And stop doing these white lines of coke

that have people blind

to white privilege and power

that is

at the expense

of an entire culture

under

white,

pedicured feet.

Few lives get their voices

heard. And so,

I started to see my voice

as powerless

too. To think my words mattered? That would be absurd.

Despite where I came from,

or how brainwashed those around me were.

I knew one day the world could be different. Or so I hoped-

I lay awake

in this abandoned

bed, missing my loved one.

Staring blankly at the ceiling.

Nobody

next to me,

hearing my cries…

My loved one-

in a cell; a separate world. Labeled

criminal

unfairly in our modern day, “safe & just” society.

Under oath he was told to plea,

despite the truth,

to avoid losing out on more years

of his youth.

And that is why when everyone else at the dinner table

laughing,

I can’t just bat an eye, and sit on a high horse,

masking

the fact

others

lives

are lost,

behind closed doors

and barbed-wire.

The dinner plates, the smoke breaks;

white noise.

mb.

13 White Lines & Black Bars

A human rights

nightmare

under our nose,

a White

line of coke.

Jim Crow laws

Men and Women

sentenced since the age of Slavery

“ended” …

Sentencing-

is this a war on crime?

A war on drugs?

White and Black

people involved

in the same crimes.

The "exception clause"

in the 13th Amendment.

The exception.

The 13th amendment.

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,

except

as a punishment for

crime

shall exist within the United States.”

1 in 17

white males will go to jail/prison in their lifetime,

1 in 3.

black males will.

Slavery “ended”?

But, unarmed black men and women being killed by police

horrific lynchings,

Emmett Till’s death,

George Floyde,

Breonna Taylor,

actual footage of African Americans being brutalized

during the civil rights movement.

Now, it’s 2020

And still we show massive inequalities

among our race,

Police brutality shoved in our face!

Our so-called

human race.

The United States has 5% of the world's population,

and 25% of the world's prison population…

Majority of the prisoners are African American.

Race

continues to

dominate the criminal justice system.

The New Jim Crow.

Mass incarceration.

A system of social

control.

Allowing

legal discrimination across the states.

Forcing black communities to grow up fearful of police.

Essentially controlling an entire population

of people-

A cycle

on repeat.

We must go to the root

of the problem.

Not just put better beds

in better prisons.

“We are not called to only trim the leaves

or prune the branches,

but rip up this unjust system by its roots.”

// MLK.

mb.

Criminal.

Prison,

is just like racism.

It is a byproduct

of capitalism.

Greed,

allows him to not care.

Power,

allows him not to care.

Privilege,

allows him not to care.

A blind eye,

allows him not to care

about the existence of human life.

Prisons,

were formed to keep slaves

in chains,

it was never about crime and is still not.

Capitalism creates these

overpopulated prisons.

The establishment

will call things criminal if there's no gain

in it for

them.

Once they can capitalize on it,

it will no longer be a

“criminal” offense.

Cigarettes kill

more people than marijuana.

It has nothing

to do with crime.

It's all about the

capital. Is the money worth it? To treat human beings in this way?

“Do not touch his shoulder. Do not rub his back.”

“One kiss and one hug

at the beginning and at

the end.

He is a prisoner.

He is an inmate.

He is a criminal. ”

mb.