Dear the Ears of Humanity,

Perhaps in this letter you will read

What you choose not to hear.

You may have forgotten I am in college wherein

January’s Tuesdays and Thursdays

Have been filled with talk of rot.

 

Ears, these last weeks I have been toiling,

America’s tainted past hath been uprooted,

Secretive soil hide hushed between mine fingers,

Bloodshot eyes bring up close lives oppressed,

Blood stained scent fills my now conscious mind.

I’ve woken in a world

Where black shadows live more than black bodies,

Where sounds cacophonous fall on deaf beings

And so, you Ears, here I am asking,

“Why have you buried your own sight from seeing?”

 

Ears, these last weeks I have been toiling,

Through the professing of educators

Mine youthful eyes see truths uncovered.

This single month my heart has seized

To know the swimming years spent in slavery.

Yet my experiences in comparison grow pale,

My mouth can form no words worthy,

And my tears cannot fix years of yearning.

 

Ears, these last weeks I have been toiling,

Trapped in shuttles spewing racist smoke.

I have been frozen in ashamed realization

For my own hands refuse to lend help.

I’ve eaten this raw, putrid hatred

And eyed all those who render the past gone,

With this recent full swallow I’ve choked down

Answers have exposed themselves where once unfound.

Its dawned on me

You have become lazy, unmoved,

Tolerating hatred, rendering dissatisfaction taboo.

You forget you are a part of humanity,

Thou role neglected, turned small.

 

I ask of you, the Ears of Humanity,

Make life much easier for yourself!

You are in search of abstract happiness, peace, love

But you think it only applicable to ones' self.

Your fields of freedom will stem from small saplings

Your rivers of retribution will rush down ranging roads

Your trees of temperance will branch out in benevolence

Love and not hatred will finally grow.

 

You see, the key to change is not action.

It is not violence or protest or smoke.

Change’s first steps are much smaller,

That require you alone, Ears, to work.

It seems you have abandoned your most basic attribute,

You’ve forgotten to sit and simply listen,

Fall in love with understanding the other side.

 

There is strength, I tell you,

In patience,

In love,

In compromise.

So, please, I beg you, Ears.

Stop our crying and answer,

“Is it our screams instead you’d like to hear?”