Click here to access the audio recording of this poem performed by Romeo Gurule himself.

This is a poem written and performed by a guest writer. If you’d like to write for The Mav, please email us at [email protected]. Similar to opinion articles, poems do not necessarily represent the views of The Mav student newspaper or its editorial board. 

America

Home of the brave

White man

Land of the free

White man

Where religion and state are separated

Except for the White man’s

As the brazing bronze beauty weeps

Shedding green tears of weather

That the greedy mistake for money

She cries in her statuesque pose

She watches her daughter cry and scream

She sees her queer doe-eyed babies die

She sees the he that was once a She crawl in their skin as men grope him

She sees the She that was once a he as men sulk in homophobic fear demolishing her piece by piece.

She knows who she represents

As she stands still in solidarity

She wishes to march back to France

To plead to take her back

She no longer represents America

For we are not united

We are not free

We are not welcoming to diversity

We do not accept the poor

We shelter no one but the rich from hatred

We protect them with military grade weapons

As children die at the feet of their peers

We pay for their yachts with our taxes

Instead of therapy for every child in America.

Who is forced to be a number

To witness the true corruption of man

Seeing mommy starve

While daddy is never home

Because they’re not their daddy’s problem

But the man on the TV says:

WOMEN ARE MURDERING BABIES

When they see their mom kill herself to provide

If they weren’t born when they were, maybe,

Just maybe, she’d only need one job

Maybe she’d have muscle on her bones

Maybe she’d find a house later on

Instead of raising them now

At the age that no one cares about

But still too young

But the white man wants more

No one cares about the lower class

We are grains of sand

On their island of paradise

So tell me

When are we going to change the word

DEMOCRACY

In our American textbooks and replace it with solely

OLIGARCHY

When will we admit this isn’t freedom anymore

When will we surrender or fight?

Our generations before us have fought and look where we are.

Do we recycle, I have a dream?

Plastering a new face to MLK’s cry for change.

Do we finally bury and forget the founders of change?

Because again we have to rebuild humanity.

Brick by brick

With callused emanated hands

Forming new architecture with literature lusting off their lips.

That is raw power.

This is where we find the flaming Phoenix

Because this is what they fear

Within the next 10 years

The white man will no longer be majority

Because melanin will rise as it has before

As pale white skin fades from America’s streets.

We have to overcome our fear

To take back our bodies

To take back our homes

Our voices

Our rights

Our freedom

OUR AMERICA

We are united in our indifferences

We all bleed red

We all have right to our body’s

And to protect the next generation

So now we need to show them

We can change

We can grow and learn

Because that is humanity

Not what the news reporters televise:

New shooting here

New shooting there

Police shoot Latino man

Police mistake a wallet for a gun shooting down black mother.

That is not humanity

We need to teach our children that

Before they become product of the

AMERICAN

Environment.