No Bedtime Stories of Soil, Landon Smith

 

Told that we are on even footing

            without checking the soil my

great grandfather was hate crime’d into.

            How much white wealth was grown

atop

his blood

in that soil telling me we are on equal footing without checking the PH first.

Forced extrication within

 the only nation birthed in a pool of racist capitalism

still bathing in the fluids happily while telling me the water is fine.

Stipulations mixed into organisms easily denied.

   Power structure complacency compartmentalized 

morality

sold in a firesale

   reigning ashes from trauma profiteers.

            Blood in the penmanship on scrolls behind fiberglass in museums now.

Written into the trauma

cracked into the fractures of family lines

I am not told outside of museum tours

                                   to not re-live horrors.

Who tells bedtime stories of trauma

            to kids in search of roots

fractured by frabjous accents dancing on the broken

lines trampled        

by theft

                        disguised as equal opportunity investment

or

                        survival of the fittest

rather than

rigged implementation of dehumanization for the sake of sociopathy in the form of wealth accumulation and joviality in amnesia.

White supremacy is a disease.

            The soil is poisoned without allowing questioning of who is pouring -

Deeds signed in genocide ink later denied.

I have blood in my family line that I haven’t been shown

and mama says you have to know where you’ve been to know where you can go

but I am tired of

                        stepping over dead bodies left in the middle road in a red summer

red state only red from the blood on the gravel

            to fester as a promise of fractured lineage

                        and black holes in the space I will never

know because who tells bedtime stories of trauma?

 

Weighted guilt from balancing blaming my parents

while not blaming my parents

for not telling stories

of broken roots and poisoned pathways

to re-live blood showers they overcame

                        because

who wants to tell kids bedtime stories in blood pools?

      Whose lullaby rocks bassinets to genocide next to night lights meant to ward off monsters

       knowing monsters loom in gene pools of sociopathy

cast as patriotism brandishing omission and ignorance as a badge of honor?

Knife still 6 inches.

No acknowledgement of the wound.

Mobility still opined as equal

knowing monsters loom.

 

Wonder what that land worth now.

Wonder how the blood lines mend now.