Prejudice Poems
102. Parallels
by Kea Campbell
Light from two bulbs drapes over my bathroom mirror;
One filament severed and the other quite near.
Steam fogs my reflection from the uselessness of the shower.
A familiar feeling of my lungs: wrangled and floundered.
Sago by my sill, most placate, my mind.
A kind sight to your eye; you'd die for a bite.
White-potted for pleasantries, and loved to a tee.
Mutualistic co-habitants in a cycle of exchanging O2 for C.
......
Color-Blind
by Floyd Hildebrand
Have you ever stopped to think and wonder,
Just how you would react, if your face,
Was of a different color, and ponder,
What if I came from a different race? Would I still harbor a prejudice,
And be concerned about someone's root,
If fate had rolled a different dice,
What if the shoe embraced a different foot? Our life stems from a heart that's red,
Symbolic of our love and friendship,
Regardless of the race, or how bred,
An undeniable biological relationship. So tell me why, some humans think,
......
Wild With All Regrets
by Wilfred Owen
(Another version of "A Terre".)
To Siegfried Sassoon
My arms have mutinied against me -- brutes!
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,
My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours.
Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.
I can't read. There: it's no use. Take your book.
A short life and a merry one, my buck!
We said we'd hate to grow dead old. But now,
......
The Task: Book Vi, The Winter Walk At Noon (Excerpts)
by William Cowper
Thus heav'nward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restor'd.
So God has greatly purpos'd; who would else
In his dishonour'd works himself endure
Dishonour, and be wrong'd without redress.
Haste then, and wheel away a shatter'd world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! We would see
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and hate his laws,
And suffer for its crime: would learn how fair
......
On The Way
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
(PHILADELPHIA, 1794)
NOTE.—The following imaginary dialogue between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which is not based upon any specific incident in American history, may be supposed to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton’s retirement from Washington’s Cabinet in 1795 and a few years before the political ingenuities of Burr—who has been characterized, without much exaggeration, as the inventor of American politics—began to be conspicuously formidable to the Federalists. These activities on the part of Burr resulted, as the reader will remember, in the Burr-Jefferson tie for the Presidency in 1800, and finally in the Burr-Hamilton duel at Weehawken in 1804.
BURR
Hamilton, if he rides you down, remember
That I was here to speak, and so to save
Your fabric from catastrophe. That’s good;
For I perceive that you observe him also.
A President, a-riding of his horse,
......
102. Parallels
by Kea Campbell
Light from two bulbs drapes over my bathroom mirror;
One filament severed and the other quite near.
Steam fogs my reflection from the uselessness of the shower.
A familiar feeling of my lungs: wrangled and floundered.
Sago by my sill, most placate, my mind.
A kind sight to your eye; you'd die for a bite.
White-potted for pleasantries, and loved to a tee.
Mutualistic co-habitants in a cycle of exchanging O2 for C.
......
Boys and Bugs
by Ben Quinn
I used to be friends with a boy named Isaac.
But Isaac told me that he likes Bugs.
Nasty, crawling, wriggling, chitinous things.
We played rochambeau in class.
I try not to think about that, his hands are probably unclean.
He tries to change my mind. I won’t listen.
What if I start to like bugs?
Disgusting.
Makes me sick, sick to my core.
......
Falsely Accused By Billions
by Randy Johnson
I bought a shotgun at a flea market without knowing that it was used to commit a horrible crime.
The former owner used the shotgun to kill an entire family and I was about to have to do hard time.
The police came to my house and confiscated the shotgun.
They thought I was the guilty party, they thought I was the one.
The entire world turned against me, I was a person who billions of people hated.
People said that I should go to the gas chamber and if I did, it would be celebrated.
Even though the public had turned against me, I convinced the police to have doubts.
I told them over and over that somebody else was the killer and they decided to check it out.
They found the real killer and it wasn't long before he was placed under arrest.
The cops showed him the bodies of his victims and he broke down and confessed.
......
Why I Am A Liberal
by Robert Browning
"Why?" Because all I haply can and do,
All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
These shall I bid men--each in his degree
Also God-guided--bear, and gayly, too?
But little do or can the best of us:
......
There's A Dark Cloud Over My Head
by Leon Thomas Lee
There is a dark cloud over my head
With every move i make, every step i take
It keeps following me
Lord you know i want to free
Dark clouds, dark clouds, dark clouds
Now as the rain begins to fall, i feel so small
I'm always getting wet with the rain of prejudice
Look there is a mist of discrimation
And the fog of injustice
Dark clouds, dark clouds, dark clouds hanging over my head
......
