My Ancestors Speak To Me

My ancestors speak to me 
I hear from them often 
Their spirits are with me
Only their bodies in a coffin 
There was a time my grandmother said she couldn’t breathe 
At half the stuff she had seen 
I couldn’t believe 
That a woman in the south had conceived 
Children during a time with men hanging from trees 
Were seen as ornaments with leaves 
Blood they spilled as paint on Canvas 
I can only imagine 
She told me 
She told me 
She told me y’all didn’t care 
She said watch out because they won’t be there 
When there was a white boy that had a crush on me 
When I was like 14 
She said watch out for his mom 
Cause they don’t like me 
This is all she knew 
Of white painting us black and blue
Making us spill red
And then had the nerve to say 
We were colored 
We didn’t know we were colored until you cut us 
You burned 
You drug us
You hung us 
And we bled 
And now that we see red 
You think we are better off dead 
But the fact is we have always seen red 
We just didn’t know we bled more than red 
Like Cain killed able 
And his blood called out to god
We heard Trayvon’s blood 
We heard George Floyd’s
And we still hear our ancestors 
My ancestors speak to me 
I hear from them often 
They’re voices are being heard now 
Only their bodies in a coffin