Thank You (2017)

Thank you for Blacks killed in their teens 

Being a typical weekend, 

Thank you for judging me based on my color 

Prior to us even speaking, 

Thank you for convincing the youth 

That Blacks are an endangered species, 

Thank you for slavery, 

I mean, we handled that one with ease, 

Thank you for the prison industrial complex 

Being a way of life for far too many Blacks, 

Thank you for the Blackman’s character 

Constantly coming under attack, 

Thank you for putting us against each other, 

Thank you for turning a blind eye as we suffer, 

Thank you for Reaganomics, 

Thank you for the hate mongering, 

Thank you for creating the angry Black women myth, 

Thank you for Jim Crow, 

Talk about a gift, 

Thank you for the lynchings, 

Thank you for yet another unjustified life sentence, 

Thank you for the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 

Malcolm X, Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, and Fred Hampton, 

Just to name a few, 

Thank you for the constant distractions

Ensuring some folks will never have a clue, 

Thank you for bleaching your skin to fit in, 

Thank you for celebrating another Blackman’s end, 

Thank you for turning Hip-Hop 

Into some noisy simple-minded deformity, 

Thank you for trying to convince us that being an Uncle Tom 

Is the only way towards conformity, 

Truly, 

We thank you enormously, 

Thank you for sweeping the raping of the Black women 

Under the rug, 

Thank you for supplying the drugs, 

Thank you for police brutality, 

Thank you for income and housing inequality, 

Thank you for that broken education system, 

Thank you for attacking wisdom with falsehoods, 

Thank you for those terrorists in the white hoods, 

Thank you for those wasted conspiracy theories 

Leading to misinformed factions, 

Thank you for not voting and other Black inactions, 

Thank you for every race riot, 

You couldn’t exterminate us, 

But thank you for trying, 

Thank you for the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, 

Thank you for white washing the pyramids, 

Thank you for the crack game, 

Thank you for stifling the next Black flame, 

Thank you for incentivizing Black men 

To leave their homes, 

Thank you for the horrendous loans, 

Thank you for even giving me a reason to pen this poem, 

Thank you for everything, 

I can’t thank you enough, 

You have truly done your part, 

A work of art, 

What a magnificent job…