Welcome, Readers.
In Nelson Mandela's book, A Long Walk to Freedom, he wrote:
"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate..."
From this profound seed of thought, I wrote the following poem in reflection upon his words. I hope you enjoy.
Clean, Until Our Little Lessons
Through the womb, like a cosmic big bang,
Out of nothingness came something,
An explosion of sights and sounds—bright and
loud:
so bright,
so loud.
A cacophony of forms flooding in upon a mind that
does not yet know where to focus,
that does not yet know what constitutes a threat.
We know no enemies upon birth,
We see no delineation between mom and dad,
doctor or nurse, man or women, Asian or Indian or
black or white—
We see only people.
We see only people.
We are only people.
Early years of exposure, symbols shown in black
and white—literally—thanks to poor parenting.
Words defined over time,
repetition like a vice for a drying sponge, concrete
for consciousness, no neuroplastic flexibility, no
critical thought empathy.
Dad yells at the brown people on the colorful box of
reality.
He looks angry and he drinks his bottle;
I know that anger now—I must try it on,
understand it, relate it to the brown people,
understand that when I’m angry I'm supposed to
drink my bottle, too.
Daddy’s little lessons, symbolic seeds for a future
intolerance;
That’s the poison I was given.
But ask yourself: How have you been damaged?
What symbols taught you hate?
What little lessons did your swallow rather than
question when you reached an age of thought? The
age of reason? Did you paradigm shift to self or live
in daddy’s little lesson?
I understand if it still weighs on you, if the
tendrilled roots still seep through the cracks
hammered into you daily, thanks to a society run by
daddy’s little lessons—their hamfisted hatred
pounding nails into the source of life, those drugaddled
and red-veined attempts at an anchor
against the existential woes, against the little
lessons of their father before them, of their father
before them, of their father before them;
You are not your father.
You are not your mother. And you are
certainly not the stories they forced upon you.