Nip It in the Bud

We heard of tragedies abroad, that threatened to reach a global peak. We suffering at home a foreigner’s grief, it can’t compete. The thought of peace in a nation is based on their belief, the second that illusion bursts at the seams the country weeps. Despite the white sheets and all the white feet we fell beneath the theater of war, needed more actors to make the show complete. We were just fighting in the streets now we in a fleet on our way to see where the edge of the horizon leads. A foreign shore, slaving for a couple months, assigned to labor corps stationed on the western front. This ain’t what I want, but it’s what the cause needs so we on a beach digging trenches until our palms bleed. Artillery exploding so loud we could touch the sound. In the path of harm but taking up arms, not allowed. Glory wasn’t meant for colored men in the rank and file. Numbers thinned as the bodies piled, now the fight is ours. A crimson flood, a nightmare of earth and blood. Suffocated by the mud we held the line and never budged. All of us, wide eyed and terrified pushing through an ocean of bodies until we turned the tide. On the day the treaty was signed, our mothers prayed for us. What awaited back in the States was no escape for us. The feelings on that journey away, see that was dangerous, because everything we found in that place, they ain’t gon’ take from us.

Agitated on the train ride home after our dismissal. I’m decorated but the victory was superficial. I see the hate when they’re staring at my army issues, how could returning be embraced when they never missed you? A law official investigating local crime stepped aboard, points at my bag, demands to see inside. It wasn’t me so I declined, looked him in his eye. I’m the one with stripes on my arm, so why is he surprised? I earned release papers from dodging missiles shredding tissue like a meat grater. He never saw his friend drop and caught the smell later. He never had to wash his body in the filthy stinking waters of a shell crater. So he ain’t qualified to question, or to command and I’m not honoring suggestions. Pushed off his hand, he reprimanded my aggression, I struggled and ran. Then I was violently arrested, now here I am. Relegated to a cage as the word travels and bad news spreads faster than the sharpest shrapnel. But I bit the apple, so ain’t no cost high enough to take away from the freedom that my actions bought. Drifting in and out of that thought, the voices woke me up. Sledgehammer busted the lock, my cell was opened up. Dragged by my throat down the block my body hoisted up. I fought for their life but it’s me these crackers roping up. Hanging for the bravery I learned in a foreign land. In the same uniform where it all began. I told myself, I’d return a Man. Prevention was the best cure, they nipped it in the bud before I got a chance.