The Black Death
"Bring out your dead."
Door to door the hooded cartsman rolls his lumbering pallet piled high with bruised ebony bodies of bloodied black men and limp black boys.
"Bring out your dead."
One by one the doors open and grieving black widows and bereaved black babies say bye-bye to their healthy, happy husbands and first born sons -- who walk to the cart and kneel at the cart to be murdered and piled atop that cart.
"Bring out your dead."
That teetering tower of wilted dead bodies sways left to right -- wounded arms and lifeless legs wound together in a knot of midnight skins akin to the ancestral jumble of limbs shackled inside those slave ships that shit them out upon these shores across sea to shining sea -- but still the cartsman piles them higher and faster. Faster and higher!
"Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead!"
Snatching black boyfriends from sidewalks. Kidnapping black kiddies from schools. Abducting black daddies from jobs. Snuffing dreams and slaughtering souls -- killing the Soul of a nation!
"BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!"
And for generations, we white folks have hidden (happily, shamefully) from that cartsman. (Feebly, cowardly) peeking, sneaking the fearful glimpse of this gruesome ghoul toiling to pull his cart of Black Death down our saccharin sweet suburban streets paved of privilege.
And every time that cart comes a'rattling -- we see nothing. (Willfully, thankfully) we close the blinds. We kiss our white children good morning and bid the missus adieu with a peck on her pretty white cheek cause we're already late for work.
"The Boss will have my ass if I don't meet my quota, honey."
We stroll out the door content in the belief we are (certainly, undoubtedly) coming home for dinner. Meatloaf Monday! Our favorite. Our lily white hands, calloused and stained red, sting as we set to begin our day.
"Bring out your dead."
We're too fucking stupid to realize we've been pulling that damned cart all along.
