How can a conscience clear itself when…
it only can see itself through the tortured eyes of “another”
whom it has vainly created to infuse with self-contempt?

 

Blindness seeks its justice by coloring images of its vacancy
on deep dark backgrounds that shine with a tepid sickness,
from billboards of blankness set above frantic crossings
I wimper from a corner of conscience that has wielded a sickle
blunted by furious madness of self-loathing.

 

I am a fingerprint of a cold hand that clutches what Love cannot be or see
naming it something to own and to fear

 

Conscience cannot own anything other than itself…
It must face the destruction of its hideous hidings
and feel the searing glance seeking to pierce its blindness

 

Molded morality grows on the frame of a fictional landscape
barely hanging onto a decaying wall…by a single rusted nail…
where one tiny wind of truth can clear –

NO!

 

                                                 SHATTER the illusion of conscience

tpt  3/2/2017

(inspired by Raoul Peck’s film “I Am Not Your Negro” which envisions the book James Baldwin never finished – a radical narration about race in America, using the writer’s original words)