By: Jose-Noel Rocha
Man fuck my education.
Fuck the fucked up trumped up terrible situation.
I think a conversation could balance the equation of the beef between colors but my mother of Spanish descent had the talk with me.
She said son your actions and your color should not compete with one another but often they do.
You look like your dad so I’ll tell you the truth,
when you get back to the man they’ll tell you what Ruth told hey Arnold:
“I like you but I don’t like you like you.”
So today I try to pencil in these haikus with lightning bolts like Raichu
I don’t do it just to spite you but you gon’ look into my eyes too when I’m standing right beside you.
Short as I may be,
and sure I might look like your cleaning lady
but my breathing lately is shaky.
I’m shaking,
it’s aggravating,
the way the play me
don’t wanna pay me
and picture us as the people they’re portraying.
I used to watch little bill,
Used catch a little thrill with will,
I heard Martin Luther on capital hill and wondered too why brown wasn’t on the social color wheel.
And I don’t mean to steal figures from black history but my brown representation is a mystery.
I slave away at these soliloquies,
wondering when they’ll witness me,
thinking when I can speak vividly to the Latin blood that lives in me.
Wishing it’ll be equal like it’s symmetry,
Wishing it wont an epiphany knowing that I simply live and breathe.
I do believe:
one day they’ll see a man who put love in his dreams,
who’s not just a bean,
who’s heart is a heart that says let freedom ring,
I’m sick of Dora the exploradora,
I want Dora the emperadora.
Where’s my Aztec empress?
Where’s my Latin excellence?
Where’s my Latin president?
Where’s my legal Latin resident who languishes largely cause he’s starving to feel evident.
No accented speech impediment on me as I love the lavish lashes of my latin queen with decadence, as I reach out to my black and yellow and red and fuck it white friends hands again.
I want peace.
Peace for the streets,
Peace for my soul,
Peace for a place where my kids can grow old.
Peace to release a story that deserves to be told I know it sounds bold but it’s cold when you don’t have heroes to look up to.
I live to give America a Latin history they can love too.
