I Watched Them

Poetry By Percival Jordan II. As featured in Stone Groove. 

Marcus Blake, host of The Vagabond’s weekly open-mic night, Stone Groove Tuesdays, is curating a new poetry series on Tropicult to provide the artist and poets a home in the interweb.

The series features his own work as well as the works by other Stone Groove performers.

This week’s poem is titled “I Watched Them” by Percival Jordan II.

“I Watched Them”

I watched them

I watched them slit their throats and let their blood muddy up the dusty roads that they’d walked on

I watched them from the hills of my own negligence

I let them die

Too scared to scream out, too stupid to run for help, but too intelligent to let them see me witnessing

Full of pride, but not enough to encompass my sudden jolt of cowardly emotions

They stood there

Heads held high with full knowledge of their coming demise and they died

With honor

No screams, no fights, just bodies

Now covered in the same crimson color that flooded their veins

They left pools of false fantasies for broken futures to swim in

And we back stroked in our own ignorance

And no this isn’t a true story

But its based on past events

You should be learning this in history class but history books say fuck you anyway

You’re gonna learn about Europe

And Christopher Columbus

And genocides will be pushed aside while we tell you about what Hitler did

Forget your kids, we’ll teach them what we choose to

No matter how much of American history it may be

They’re thinking

We need to teach them what they need to know

So they don’t end up hating we

And God forbid they learn the truth

We don’t want any race passionate enough to start their own panther party

This is America

Where we sell “freedom” to slaves

Where we applaud our country’s hypocrisy

Where we listen to the people but still do what we want, that’s what we happen call democracy

Where racism rests at our door steps

And we can’t stop killing because our violence is who we are

Yes I watched them

Too scared to let them see me witnessing…

So I left them blind folded

Let the blade that bleeds out broken promises massage your throat ever so gently

See we are the murderers of what matters most

We choose to mistake our ignorance for pride

As we commit some kind of nationalist suicide

And most of our problems rest on our obvious racial divide

Yes I watched them… In the mirror… I killed them with my own eyes