I loved this poem. It is very powerful and inspiring. I liked the way you used visual allusions, they were very beautiful. The imagery of your poem is also very descriptive. Great job!
Down by the creek
and the hay so sweet
There was a sun so yellow
high in the sky
Basking the white man's
tyrannic lies
Chains rattle
Jangling against
their heavy skin
Laboured with a hard day's work
to harvest food that they have never been given
The light
And the dawn
Oh so high and mighty!
For lo ember kisses
of the ashes of their future
and their past
Lick their wordless lips
They pray to the Lord
for sweet relief
Naked and bare
against their leader's toxic rule
Victimised.
One day
they may be in heaven
Where they are free
A tug!
And a pull...
Sweat
Drips down their warm bodies
Fluent and thirsty
Picking and lifting
the whisps of cotton
That they would never feel
The comfort
of clothing
May the stars bless these sweet slaves
who infest the past with shame
And guilt
That has not been felt-
for the weed that is slavery still exists
One that plagues.
The illness are not the workers
But us
the followers
Of sinful hyms
Of pain and selfish
barren souls
At least
they have dignity
To stick with their own.
And they survived
the grips
of our mistakes.
But some errors
are still
being erased.
I loved this poem. It is very powerful and inspiring. I liked the way you used visual allusions, they were very beautiful. The imagery of your poem is also very descriptive. Great job!
For the thematic content of the work, @frogforest has covered it wonderfully. This is a fantastic and very powerful piece about something really hard to talk about. The short lines draw out every word, making reading almost laborious in pace, which is a stellar choice given the subject matter and how you portrayed it. The dehumanization of enslaved people is an issue touched upon, and I think changing the language you use in the line "May the stars bless these sweet slaves" could show that they were and are still people instead of only slaves. That's really the only issue I could find in this poem, which is astounding. Great work, and keep writing!
I feel like everyone should have to read this. And like not in a school setting because I think that ruins everything. Like people should all, at one point in their life, read through this and spend some time thinking about it. Because AGAIN you have written a really powerful piece. So many people don't understand slavery as a concept as well as the psychological aspects of it. Nowadays there is a lot of misinformation and undereducation on the topic. Your poem really tackles these topics in a way that is almost painful to read because of the truth and history behind the words.
I like how in the ending you tied it into how this is important to know in the modern world. Slavery still exists today, and even in places where it doesn't, there are still impacts on society we can see. The final lines: "But some errors/are still/being erased." definitely captured this theme really well.
The beginning is super detailed while still easy to read and short, and I am a huge fan of that. It means that people of almost all ages could get a vivid picture of slavery when they read it. The most impactful lines in the beginning were (in my opinion); " Basking the white man's / tyrannic lies/ Chains rattle / Jangling against / their heavy skin". So many people don't understand that slavery was so much more than forced labor. It was dehumanization and beyond. Another thing that this line prompts the audience to think about is white privilege, and how it disadvantages many minorities and people of color. Internalized racism in today's modern society is something that should not exist, but does.
Another few lines that got me on the edge of my seat were, "That has not been felt- /for the weed that is slavery still exists / One that plagues. / The illness are not the workers / But us /the followers". It holds the reader at a sort of accountability. It warns of the dangers of denying history and the struggles of others.
I can't even explain how gripping and though provoking your work here is. Where I live it's kind of rare for people accept how wrong and inhumane slavery was, and how it still impacts people today. The US has a huge history with racism and discrimination, but yet rarely recognizes this.
I have no suggestions except this: KEEP WRITING OMG YOU'RE AMAZING
But seriously this piece is one for the records.
120,181 Literary Works • 648,936 Reviews
Points: 6
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