Muted Rainbow

The only colors of the rainbow I can feel anymore are red and blue.

Red and blue lights steal black bodies

As red and blue hues consume me with sad, intense, rage.

Trauma sets the stage for resolution or revenge.

Where we pretend the latter is a means to an end.

And then we become the thing we most want to end.

Hate. Hopelessness. Hurt. Horror.

It's horrible that the measure of a life

is measured by the attention it commands in black and white.

Or worse, that we don't have time to value

what is one story in a hundred.

My momma told me I'm one in a million.

Society tells me, I'm one of many villains worthy of killing.

And so I'm left building resilient

walls to find my brilliance

Bathed in red and blue.

R & B provides no quiet storm;

no slow jams.

No soothing sound for tired minds.

Only the reminder that my vision is duller now.

I don't see color. Except in two dimensions: anger and sadness.

The belief that they come together in purple harmony is misguided.

What you perceive as the royal supreme

I perceive as oppression of the essence of me.

If black absorbs the spectrum

how can I be great in the absence of that which makes me whole?

I am perpetually five short of the goal

To be more than the absence of.

To be more than in spite of.

To be more than despite of.

To be more than in defiance of.

To be more than in memory of.

I am more than a story of survival.

Light wants to come in, but the world's too busy

trying to save light from herself.

The only thing bypassing the prism of distorted savior mentality

Is the afterglow of fury and pain.

They tell you it's beautiful.

They tell you it's enough.

But confronted with the same

And enough loses its luster.

It's more than I can muster

To be bigger than the world

When all I've seen is diminished capacity

To capture what light has for me.