Traveling

Published on December 2016 | Categories: Documents | Downloads: 58 | Comments: 0 | Views: 430
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Traveling By Alex Detrick

I am a traveler Traveling with you Through stormy weather Immersed in racial identity Sprinkled with ethnicity Drenched in social construct With the fresh scent of racial mingling Still lingering In my clothes And pockets packed With the paperwork required To cross invisible checkpoints Attempting to protect my hair From the downpour As my curls unfurl and frizz forms Creating a halo of ethnic ambiguity Hearing the languages of the lands shift And swaying my words as I move Back and forth Back and forth Back and forth Between classes and cultures

Perceived at times as a native And sometimes as naïve

Through the rain I can still see clearly now Your differences in tones and textures And the desolation left by those travelers Who confiscate cultures and crush communities These are the sights on my tour And the images saved on my camera And I travel with a few of the freedoms Afforded to me by my shade when I across one border And taken from me when I across another And I travel on exploring and engaging Those I encounter to organize efforts to protect people from the downpour

I hear the thunder roll And hear the whispers from some travelers Of a Mecca, a heaven on Earth A place of freedom from future storms Where solidarity shines At all times An ethnic land of milk and honey But, honey, I have traveled far and wide

Without seeing signs of this place I tell you, I hear these tall tales of A post-racial promised land In a tension-free territory Where no awkwardness or accountability can be found Where the lightest people can tread lightly Without any baggage Misleading guides tell these tales To the racially restless who seek refuge From the cultural clouds

But, God, I tell you I have been traveling With no spaces left for stamps In my passport Gripping myself tightly As the wind whips me And torrents tatter my belongings And I know this happy land does not exist Tricked travelers thought Checking one box on one historic day Earned them a naturalization ceremony To become citizens of an unnatural land With ethnic blindness and cloudless skies Yet the voting booth did not provide safe passage

To a land that is not our home Or stop the rain of racism From saturating us all These are the elements we must face In our cultural climate and this land is our land to travel as is

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