I know it seems like all I write is poetry, but I swear I have just recently been super inspired. My church had asked me to write a poem for Martin Luther King Jr. day, they wanted me to talk about his life and how he trusted in his faith. This poem was made in honor of his memory and his day.
Since his birthday and his national holiday fall on the same week, I was feeling super inspired. My poem is a singular version of my personal experience, it is in no way meant to offend anyone. I know that recently religion, race, and other topics can be kind of heavy and controversial.
However, my religion and my race are two large parts of my identity and I think it is important that I talk about what I know and what I experience. Around this time last year I was actually visiting the MLK monument and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It was an inspiring and enlightening trip that I do wish to retell one day.
National Museum of African American History and CultureAuthor's Photo
For today, here is the poem I wrote about Martin Luther King and faith in God, it's titled Along Came Martin.
Hey you! Insert racial slur here get to back of the bus!
You see for a long time the world feared people like us.
Why do they holler? And why do they scream?
All we wanted was to live the American Dream.
But that dream was a nightmare, a dead end of sorts.
The world was not ready to be kind to me and my African American cohorts.
We were put in cages, sold and displayed,
They treated us as lesser than so our humanity would soon decay.
For years we sat there and took what they said,
We believed them when they told us we should've been white instead.
The only way to get respect for a while was to be a white man,
But as you can see, to their anger it didn't go as planned.
Soon there were marches and their were protests,
Because we as people knew we should be treated as best.
And then one day came Martin,
That is Martin Luther King.
He was baptist like his father and taught us to let freedom ring.
Martin taught me to chase what I believe,
He showed that through peace and prayer anything can be achieved.
Just like Jesus our savior, Martin stood and took the blows and never fired back.
No matter how he acted all people saw was that he was black.
They threatened his family and threw him in jail,
But he knew with God on his side he could never fail.
A black man in America
One that had a Dream, a dream of a new America where we were all on the same team.
I liked that new America the one that he said,
But here in this America, our water is filled with led.
There's led in the water, that no one will fix,
The president sees illegal immigrants as a bigger risk.
So many issues that seem to never get solved,
Because those issues take new forms each year they evolve.
Martin wanted a world where we could all be free,
Martin wanted a world where opportunities could be rich for people like me.
On one fatal day, Martin was shot,
It seemed like all the hearts of our people just stopped.
But Martin was a Baptist, he followed his faith,
And for that we know God had brought him somewhere safe.
MLK MonumentAuthor's photo
Thanks for reading a poem that nobody asked for, I think this may be a new thing for me. I've never really shared my poems publicly before. Maybe this is good for me.
