Progress

Brown faces wear beaten smiles and tired eyes.

A bronze that’s loss its self-affirmed glitz.

Their weary bones trek from corner to corner.

Proud fists pummel one another. Black and

Blue knuckles swollen. Their ebony’s lost

Its elegance. Fallen from grace before

It was fully obtained. Words knife brothers

And sisters. Stabbing backs and hearts, young and

Old. No sense of his-story or her-story.

Their heads slanted toward the ground like

Streetlamps on dank alleyways. They drag their feet

Lazily, erasing the many paths etched by their forefathers

And mothers: no direction. Their pants hang near their

Knees: shackles binding the ankles causing them to waddle  . . .

It’s ironic. They need to progress, but a sudden jerk

Forward would cause them to fall on their faces.