Swear me in why don't you
I’ve been watching from the sidelines for too long
We let the players skirt the boundary lines, we ignore every foul
Every time their words travelled further than their complacency
Every time we are forced to watch as the clocks runs out
To be patient as the sweat scorches all of our faces,
Burns our eyes because we’re too busy carrying the game to wipe them
Why not just swear me in?
Really, it’s an honest question
You don’t have to be thirty five to lie to people
Hand me the wheel instead, and I’ll see what I can maneuver
I may not have enough money to avoid my taxes,
Not sure if speaking full sentences and being able to read a dictionary
Is a requirement anymore
But no matter, I can do that either way
It can’t be too hard of a job
I mean we did without it for four years
Four years
Four years to realize nothing he said
Had enough weight to survive being thrown against a current
Every word would get picked up by the wind
And taken away to some dark American corner of unsightlies
His KKKers are festering in
With their hypocritical loyalty to patriotism and treason
Swear me in why don’t you,
It’s just America
The country that prides itself on never being invaded... until it invaded itself
Yeah, no foreign enemies might have made it to the capital
But thirty year old Reddit connoisseurs who still frequent their parents basement
Or who are probably late for a knee replacement
Or who haven’t stopped suckling long enough to grow in their teeth
Are more militant than the millions of immigrants you swore would be the ones
Who made a mockery of strength and a joke of patriotism
More powerful than all the Muslims you stop before planes
All the Black men and women you lock away in cells or premature graves
But I guess if we’re being reasonable,
Patriotic, even
We’d have more patience with the lack of defense.
After all, it would be far too much to expect the police too defend the capital
When they were the ones storming it
Anyone who know better should be staring at the screen
And wondering why the stormers aren’t Mexican,
You would think so from the hysteria in 2016
The way we cried bloody murder at the borders
While we committed bloody murder in the streets
I just want to know how you can lick the boot of the three richest tax evaders
The president, being another, no less
And then act like you care if immigrants pay their fair share
Why you protect the rich with empty pockets, I’ll never get
Just to wonder what would have happened if the stormers were Black
If rioters were Black
If the looter that stole that Congressman's laptop was Black
If the terrorists were Black
Wondering like I don't remember when the protesters were Black
When Black lives, not livelihoods, were at stake
Protesters being beaten, tear gassed, intimidated, trapped
Protesters who were beaten down for speaking, standing, existing
Protesters who were Black but
Who were Black women
Who were old
Who were children
First amendment users
Citizens
20 Black kids in a park
To four police cars, a police van, and detectives
But no, the 686 million dollars we allotted on defense
Was no match for stupidity
No match for confronting the ugly truths that to you,
Only amount to old Confederate relics
Which receive more recognizance than the mass graves they were fighting to fill
Unholy truths have evolved from the measly paragraph teachers have us skim read in history classes
But to me
Amounts to structures, cultures, people
Nay, heroes
Hold on to your favorite celebrity if you must so long as you plug your ears and pretend not to hear the echoes of their indiscretions
Their human rage, digested hatred, inherited ignorance from Disney spin-offs and Labor Day sales
To secluded internet forums
Bound to convict them in the court of Faux-Culture
How can you cancel someone from a culture
Which bred the unsightlies you now shame them for?
I ought to give you some handcuffs
Like an air mask on the plane
Put them on yourself before you put them on your children
Looking at some of them makes me think:
“Well, where are the slave-catchers?”
The protect and servers
Who did neither when they chased after the slaves
Before they were freed, or freed themselves rather,
Because ain’t it awkward how at the very least, no one ever talks about how in the hell we got off the plantations
Then I look at the sweatshops, the work days with crappy pay
The cycle of poverty, homeless, and flimsy healthcare
The Black trans sex workers who die for the work they do everyday
The same people they work for, they die from
And I doubt whether we ever left
Swear me in, I built the country anyway
How else could America still look so shiny,
As if we ever left the gilded age,
Income inequality has only gotten worse
Worse for white people too, yes
Sorry, I have to say that to keep your attention
Mine is well occupied
My eyes are on the police, my heart with the victims, my hands with others who are ready to use them
And your attention is on your phone screen
You can post all the MLK quotes and praise Boseman you please (RIP)
But Shakur said we have a duty to fight for our freedom,
Not a duty to tweet
For all the power in visibility, so is there in distraction
So is there in inaction
You might tweet, like, save, share, repeat
While my brothers and sisters are dying in the street
But you can close your phone screen, hide the world when you’d rather not see it
And criticize the ones who don’t like your feed
Like everyday isn’t a revolution in my skin
And a privilege in yours
Don’t look at how I live when you can’t see what it took for me to wake up
And I cannot stress this enough
Let’s not make Biden a martyr for the cause, a speaker for the people
Let’s remember that democracy and the Democratic Party are not synonymous
One means social equality,
Speaking for those who need
And the other only does so conditionally
Am I suppose to start standing up for the flag now?
When does the flag stand up for me?
There’s a reason we can’t be free when the Black women isn’t
While we can celebrate the death of a reigning idiot
In favor of a more palatable ‘not racist’
But then turn around and look at who we elected
Great a rapist for president
Is it indicative that this is the lesser of our two evils
Why we’d rather pick the racist over the woman to begin with?
A couple emails were worth surrendering the country but not
Sexual assault allegations, discrimination law suits, … an empty resume
Why can we not respect women?
Why is it only #MeToo on condition?
Can we have a news source that doesn’t lie when it’s convenient?
Why is Tara Reade the only one that has to prove it?
And then there’s the pandemic
The studio, full coverage lighting
To everything shameful about American freedom
Every Asian and Asian American spit on for bringing the ‘China Flu’
That the US is so intent on propagating
Every Jewish life threatened or lost by a history intent on gripping their ankles
Neighbors too blind with hatred, resentment and hypocrisy
To recognize the irony
Every disproportionate amount of Black
and Latinx
and indigenous
Lives lost or shaken
By inhumane healthcare system
And people who couldn’t care to take caution
Every person sitting on more money than they could spend
While others scrape for every coin they could have
Every person who is too different to feel worth it
This is full coverage lighting
Your spotlight to tell America
Just how much freedom it gave you
And just how much it took along with it
America do you refuse to hear or were you never listening?
How long can you pretend your cotton isn’t washed with blood?
Your flag sown with the pain which bred it
Freedom glazed in the sweat of every broken back that carried it to the edge of the world and back before it could ever be missed
Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
A more perfect union
Four score and seven years ago
I had a dream that your words meant something
That I can turn on the news and trust what I see
That I can say what I mean, be who I am and that will be enough
This is a nightmare
America, Swear me in
A fool's done the job and left us in shambles
I’m not so sure about the next guy
They don’t look like Obama
And they look even farther away from me
America Swear me in
I have lived my life and that’s more than the last guy can say.
Christel Robinson is a writer, actor, visual artist, and social activist. She is an alumni of the MCC Theater Company’s Youth Performance lab and is currently a member of their Playwriting lab. She is also a First-year Psychology and Performing Media Arts major student at the College of Arts and Sciences of Cornell University. Christel graduated from Bard High School Early College II in 2020.
Black Lives Matter at NYC Schools 