operating system

is it just a quirk
in the system
that those who are dying

on the frontlines of injustice
across our country
are mostly black and brown?

or is it built into
the system to 
oppress those with skin tones

darker than the colonizers who
stole this land?
I'll say: it's no quirk.




--
April PAD - Poetic Asides Day 22: quirk

Zookeepers

There is nothing exotic 
about caging tigers or people

poverty is a zoo 
and the keepers long ago

threw away the keys
allowed the wealthy to watch

the destruction of the 
poor, parentless, miners, minions, slaves

calling the infighting feral, 
innate in the incarcerated as 

a class (a species 
inhuman and different from themselves 

completely), and not due 
to their unnatural imprisonment 




--
April PAD - Poetic Asides Day 17: exotic