Prison of Dreams

A crown of fleeting hope adorns the head of a Negro girl

A flutter in the breeze of an unfulfilled promise

Like a broken bird it inevitably crashes

Pulling fragments of a wandering soul

Down from their perch

From their prison of dreams

The father still chases a distant wish

Barely as stable as the Beauvais Cathedral

What else does he have to lose?

He willingly stands in his collapsing fortress

From one prison he goes, to another he stays

Just as her father, the Negro girl is incarcerated

She wakes from the prison in which he stays

She goes to the prison from which he has been freed

Her anchored feet drag through dusty halls

The bird is chained to the glowing ground

She forgets her father on his high perch

And joins her mother in this greed infested reality

Another servant of one race

Another master of the other

A mouthful of scraps which she stomachs delightfully

A well-worn uniform meet well-shined shoes

Dying to be spit on by the rich white warden

They always are

They always do

Two little black crows are easily crushed

When their wings have already been snapped

A cloudy journey down a blindingly dark road

To a deafeningly dark future

Shoes lose their luster to superior saliva

A shoe-shining boy grins with diminished spirit

The bird flies on

Into a beautiful nightmare

Equals dance with drunken glory

Music blares into deteriorating ears

Although not unordinary

Still unpleasant

Green paper falls from a pulsing sky

Into fumbling feathers

Fiery eyes latch on with desperate valor

As a distracted body plummets carelessly

The clouds do not pass and the bird does not notice

The boy still smiles his smile and the bird is not bothered

She clings to the crumpled papers

As she falls sideways through the town

A tasteless light drags her into a cluttered and homely fascination

She does not think on it long

A window shatters, but it is a familiar sight

Glass pierces the Negro girl’s skin

She pays no mind

She has escaped to her fragile incarceration

Another day ends splayed out on the roof of the prison of dreams

She waits