I’m Everything You Know Not
 
No, I’m not the Summertime-easy-living, sloth-slow,
     yardbird-yapping, lawn-jockey-like idler outside your door.
No, I’m not the ski-mask-wearing, Cain-psychotic,
     hatred-hankering, violence-devoted brute attacking you.
No, I’m not the bonobo Daddy-O with my pants down to my knees,
     leaving the world with a million misbegotten babies.
No, I’m not the b-ball-hogging, all-day-dribbling, hoop-headed
     Monarch of Color holding court on a basketball court.
No, I’m not the metronome-accurate dancer of your
     hip-hop-rhythmic music video scenario.
No, I’m not the pop star with the clay-recreated features
     singing and dancing for your green money approval.
No, I’m not the next Kanye parading in blond hair
     for a photo op with a fascist tyrant wearing a Republican-red tie.
No, I’m not another Jay-Z saying the same insulting N-word
     that our black ancestors heard while their humanity got murdered.No, only death will stop my demand that all states allocate
     a reparative bandage for the sinful Middle Passage.
No, nothing will stop the stance of this Black man
     and the two-fisted persistence of my resistance
     to external and internal racism.  


~

A Song for Sheroes
 
Women, make men comprehend,
Women, make men comprehend,
Women,
Make men comprehend
That each sister
Has a Harriet Tubman
Prepared to seek
A place where men
Do not abuse their Queens,
A place that erects Jewels of Respect.
 
Women, make men comprehend,
Women, make men comprehend,
Women,
Make men comprehend
That each sister
Has a Shirley Chisholm
Prepared to shake and make every state
Understand that liberation
Must not become a membership card
Only given to men.
 
Women, make men comprehend,
Women, make men comprehend,
Women,
Make men comprehend
That each sister
Has a Kamala Harris
Showing all chauvinists
And misogynists
They are as unwanted as a virus.
 
Women, make men comprehend,
Women, make men comprehend,
Women,
Make men comprehend
That each sister Has a Dr. Mae C. Jemison
Entering a NASA shuttlecraft
That ascends to a time
Where gender mistreatment ends.
 
Women, make men comprehend,
Women, make men comprehend,
Women, make men comprehend.
 
~

America’s Unconstitutional Grill
 
Near the counter,
    One seat away from a guy named Uncle Sam,
    I sat in America’s Unconstitutional Grill,
    Notorious for its discrimination special.
    Recollections took my psyche traveling
    Throughout gripped and whipped generations.
    I remembered Sam’s culture-ramming family
    Capturing my kin
    And reducing them to abused horses
    In a round pen.
 
My temper went from a semiautomatic pistol
    To a ballistic missile.
    Around then,
    My anger could have leveled
    America’s Unconstitutional Grill.
 
Right before my left was going to punch Sam
     So his teeth would meet a dirt heap
    ‘Neath some table’s feet,
    Non-Caucasian children came in.
    They ordered cheeseburgers.
    A spoiled-cream-distasteful waitress,
    Wearing a hairnet,
    Said, “The Grill did not get
    The School Budget Tomato Sauce yet.”
 
Judging from the way
    Their liveliness took a graveyard turn,
    Non-Caucasian children did learn
    Unconcern made their meals burn.
 
According to other non-Caucasian patrons,
     There was not much pepper
     In the House and Senate stew.
     Non-Caucasian patrons spat discontent
     Over the cop-frisked pork biscuits
     Accompanying assorted penal-smelly vittles.
 
Seconds from leaving America’s Unconstitutional Grill,
     Despite my refusal to select a speck,
     The waitress tossed me a check.
     After I tabulated
     Subjugation's cost,
     I told the ashy cashier,
    “Get the damn owners to atone
     And reimburse for every year 
     My people spent here.”
 

~
Bob McNeil, writer, editor, cartoonist, and spoken word artist, is the author of Verses of Realness. Hal Sirowitz, a Queens Poet Laureate, called the book “A fantastic trip through the mind of a poet who doesn’t flinch at the truth.” Among Bob’s recent accomplishments, he found working on Lyrics of Mature Hearts to be a humbling experience because of the anthology’s talented contributors. Copies of that collection are available here: https://amzn.to/3bU8Loi.