It's not like I opened my eyes so much as you opened my eyes,
You kept them squinty in my younger days, reared in invisible homogeneity,
Maybe a little Charlie Pride and Jimmy in the background,
You gave me a brain that dug science, humans weren't that exciting then to me.
Out there in the middle up by Canada, with nothing but books and a little TV
And a movie or two to show me something different,
They didn't even let me watch Roots -- too young, doncha know
But for me, that little wasn't enough, I wasn't thoughtful enough about that stuff
Because I never had to be, it was all out there in a state far far away and long ago
Entertainment, ideas learned like a language that you don't use, faded fast,
In the few incidents I was forced to face it, that time in that bar in Mississippi
Or was it Alabama? Louisiana? It was easy to forget without skin in the game
Like a broken finger after it heals, no big deal and good enough after
You'd throw something a little spectacular now and again,
But erratic and sporadic wasn't enough to make me feel you, you know
Rodney King came and went, then you sent OJ and Trayvon, the others between,
The conversation would flow and ebb, as regular as a tide, rocking me to sleep?
Didn't really register long term because me and my life didn't have the bandwidth
No doubt at every moment I'd've answered the questions with the right answer,
But intellect is not emotive, and so it remained theoretical because privilege,
Which I didn't ask for or even know I had, intellectual empathy is a fallacy,
I brushed you off in favor of my favorite endeavors, education and science
I had no idea it was right there on the other side of a gossamer film until...
You were right there now, and with time and normal abrasion, it shredded,
I could see you right there, and still! it was like a slow boil and other things,
Always the distractions, albeit compelling ones like family, job, avocations.
But you maybe got impatient years later, and threw us all in a blender,
Tied me down with coronavirus with too much time on the laptop,
Grabbed my head, turned it left and said look at George Floyd now, motherfucker,
"See? Do you feel me now?"
And because Rona roughed us all up and pried me open a little, got vulner-able,
I felt it enough this time, with the time to sit with it at home not working so much,
And me, because you let me have some time with those people before,
Those people I love from my teaching days in high school in central San Diego
Knowing now that was another (reverse) privilege not everyone gets
But everyone of privilege deserves, just as every everyone deserves my privilege.
You finally opened my eyes and let it go into my head, and this time pass through
To the rest of me, the legs and arms, and that's why this time it's different for me,
Taking me fifty-odd years to see and feel what no one should have to feel and that
Thirteen point four percent of us grok by age ten, insofar as a ten year old (or less)
Can fathom four hundred years of oppression on a people
So easy to say, "400 years of oppression," but knowing it's made up of the daily,
Continual and inexorable moments of mistreatment, part of the air in America.
As much as I can see this part, it's beyond my ken, and what little I do,
Tells me this is my
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