A treasure chest

A Pandora’s Box

That holds what is best

Or contain a pox

Some consider important

Others trivial

Some may find discordant

Others find harmony

Like a box

It is made

It can be carried

Can be shown the contents inside

Through the windows

We call eyes

Warmth, Empathy, Anger, Madness

Envy, Care, Regret

Sadness, Lonliness

Love........

Soul is a box

So what does yours hold?

#poetry

It’s a new day

A new me

There is no time to lay

It’s time to meet

The expectations I’m meant to be

I walk down the street

Listening to a beat

I pass by a dozen

No, hundreds now

Students walking like zombies

It’s early morning, they still want the Z’s

It’s been a moment and I zoned out a bit

Oh snap, class has started, my eyes parted

Teacher shaking his head with disapproval

Kids sniggering as I felt rueful

Class was over, I walked out

There was a commotion, I checked out

Three girls fighting in a mosh pit full of boys

It was a two on one, already unfair

But nobody had cared

Broken tiles and spilt blood

The fight was broken up

The principal’s office quickly filled up

A White and a Latina

Not so lucky pair

A Black girl whose face was spared

I heard the judgement

The black girl is to blame

But turns out it was a one-sided claim

She never got to explain

But ignorance they feign

Never saw her again

She’s probably in Juvie

Such stories are common it’s such a shame

I once punched a school bully, one that he deserved

All I received was a “slap on the wrist”

I got lucky for a minority

A single day in-school suspension, but I was okay

Over 3 million of my peers receive an out-of-school suspension

Little 4-year-old preschooler in the news,

To be placed in Juvenile detention

My heart aches, my mind afflicted

Because the little kid was black

How cruel can our system be?

To force a little child behind bars?

Barely aware of his surroundings,

He is shoved into a potential life of crime

So early in his life.

A cruel fate to live in.

I once watched a friend of mine get dragged away

He was black, I see a trend

We were taught rules and disciplinary actions

To be drones of the society

A nail stuck out is to be hammered in

And yet in that same school

We were taught the dangers of Zero-tolerance policies

Rules that don’t give a damn about the vulnerable youth.

I call that hypocrisy.

I see a jail.

SRO’s? Ha, I see only the police

Monitoring me and my peers’ every move

Mostly minorities, especially the black Americans

Wait till you hear these numbers

They’ll make you sick

3 million students with police but no nurses

14 million students with police

But no counselors, nurses, psychologists, or social workers

My mind goes blank at those outstanding numbers

I turn a corner and look up

Lights, Camera, Action!

Say cheese to the security cams

They’re everywhere.

School is safe they say

The government declared The War On Drugs

Believing Marijuana was a problem, among many things

The irony is the war itself created an even bigger problem

Delinquents can be quickly hunted, caught, and sent away

Minor infractions are capital offenses

With all of these security measures in place

There can only be good students

In reality, there are only the meek sheep left

To be herded by our uncaring society

They claim they care

They claim they are working on it

But they blame on each other’s politcal party

I can only see the Criminalization of the Youth

Some of these kids are never to be seen again

Many stuck in Juvie

This is called the school-to-prison pipeline

Where kids are funneled into jail

Juvenile detention supposed to re-educate them

Once let out, they are funneled back in.

‘Lost causes’ and ‘once a criminal always a criminal’

Some teachers and parents think

Resistance is disobedience, it’s hammer time

A stuck-out nail to be hammered in

It’s all about power

It’s all about the narrative

For power is subjective

If you were black

You get pulled aside

Stop and Frisk the police did

No matter if you were innocent

They deemed you a problem kid

Hebh Jamal would agree

That power is used to suppress

Not solve issues it needed to address

Voices stifled, cries for help unheard

Racial profiling a disease in our society

It’s easier to deal harsh punishments than to reach out

Yet all people just wanted,

Was an ear to hear them out

Ears fall deaf, voices clamped, hearts broken

Into the dungeon once again

Feeding into the Prison Industrial Complex

Where Privitation of Incarceration puts them back to work

In the name of remediation

Broken drones who are lent out to work

Prisoners have no rights

They lost their civilian status

Welcome to hell

Where slavery is back again

1 in 15 black men are behind the bars

US accounts for 25% of the world’s prisoners

Women of color also meet a similar fate

Dealing with molestation, rape, and homelessness

Young mothers hopping place to place

Only to find themselves digging deeper

Into a darker pit

These mothers need our help

Not tough love Sharon White Harrigan said

So much for the “Land of the Free”

More like the “Land of a Thousand Apologies”

Curiosity got the better of me

We’re taught that segregation is over

That it was a blight

But my school mostly white

My other school was mostly non-white

Yes very Asian of me, I attended two high schools during my Junior year

I saw a lie, segregation is a non-stop fight

It still exists today and many don’t believe it still breathes

Wake Up! Wake Up! It’s not a dream!

Our future is going down the stream!

Our schools are unfairly funded

No thanks to Neoliberalism

School boards take out their fishing rods

Funding strung, hooked and casted off

Schools fight for the money, like fish in a pond

Here come the charter schools

Oh No! Welcome to the Privitation of Education

A new era of US Education

Schools closed!

Schools Phased out!

Schools Converted!

Over 150 of them in Chicago were low income neighborhoods

It takes a 9-year-old kid to speak out

To lash out against the evil known as Rahm Emanuel

How dare he shut down our schools?

Asean Johnson rants as he spoke the minds of thousands

How can we let him carry the weight of this issue on his tiny back?

A shame on all the adults

Who don’t have the courage to fight back

We need a transformative justice system Walida Imarisha preached

One that stops harm being done

But also one that gives the needs of the people a ton

Not a hand gun

But a quality of life that is number one.

My parents came to America to be free

But what I saw was hypocrisy

What I saw in school was not a dream

I watched videos of students dragged from the classroom

I watched videos of students tackled

I watched them...

I could only watch them...

As their eyes stared into mine

Bloodshot with tears and anger

It was suppression and a reality

They claimed America was equal and free

But from what real life has it

We got snakes in the grass running our country

Forked tongues spitting poison in our society

In the name of American idealology

Where are the adults to help our children?

When their tears are shed because of the monsters in our society

Who shed crocodile tears for votes and money

Please I beg you all for civil liberty

So that we can be an educational society

We are no longer the land of the free

We have become a prison in a land called United States