Your Black World: I Pledge Allegiance to Truth - By Yorri Berry

I Pledge Allegiance to Truth

By: Yorri Berry

Once upon a time I pledged allegiance

I pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

And to the republic for which it stands

One nation, under God, indivisible

With liberty and justice for all

But today

Today I pledge allegiance to truth

I pledge allegiance to truth

Thus forcing the regurgitation of lies digested for years

So today I stick my revolutionary finger down my throat like a struggling bulimic

Refusing to keep toxic deceit in my purified spirit any longer

And I give you back the lies in the garbage can it should have remained in to begin with

All for justice and liberty with

Indivisible, God under, nation one

Stands it which for republic the to and

America of States United

The of flag

The to allegiance pledge I

Allegiance pledge I

Time a upon once

Upon a time

Stood I

A little caramel mocha girl in my catholic school uniform

I stood there

Watching the American flag blowing with the wind

Proud

Hand across my heart

Beating fast

Believing indeed

Having some kind of faith in this country to which I pledged allegiance

Loyalty

Faithfulness

I trusted these United States of America to be

One nation, under God, indivisible

With liberty and justice for all

Trusted it to be one nation not one nation rooted in economic & racial separation

On every application wanting to know if I’m African-American or Caucasian

Latino or Haitian

Of Indian decent of or Asian

Yet still claiming to be one nation…under God…indivisible

Embracing liberty and justice

Even then, my petite twelve year-old frame knew that something wasn’t right about me reciting those words authentically

And today, twelve years later, my liberated mind and commitment to truth won’t let me utter such a pledge and still walk away with my dignity

My reciting would be an indication of my saluting you America

And I don’t pledge allegiance to you

No, today I pledge allegiance to truth

Maybe my words make me unpatriotic but I was never a patriot anyway

And if I have to choose between being what you deem a faithful American or revolutionary in thought and deed then I’d rather bring forth revolutions of change any day

Yes I still smell the smoke that covered liberty

131 years and 19 amendments later finally deciding to move forward with the enactment of Women’s suffrage allowing women the right to vote yet still in this 2008 women still don’t receive equal pay for equal work

Yes I still smell the smoke that covered justice

Brutally beaten, shot in the head, then thrown in the Tallahatchie River with a 75 pound cotton gin tied to little 14-year old Emmett Till’s neck while his killer walked and still today the Sean Bell’s of the world can get 50 bullets put inside of him by men shooting and neglecting instead of serving and protecting and still walk away without penalty

Yes I still smell the smoke

And yes the smoke still covers the hope of the liberty and justice you claim to stand for

The oneness you claim to promote

And the only indivisibility with which I can link you to is failure to be worthy enough of my trust

I trusted you to educate my little brothers but instead of investing in his education you prepare him a cell and track him into incarceration by allowing $476 million dollars to build a new prison instead of a better school

I trusted you to do something about the 9 million American children without health care but instead you’d rather be spending billions on a war establishing democracy in foreign nations instead of fighting for egalitarianism and social equality on this American soil, this supposed land of the free you call democracy

I trusted you to heed to King’s dream and do more than deliver broken promises, a broken economy, disconnection and disregard for the fact that freedom ain’t ringing in most of the neighborhoods where the people look like me

I trusted you to make us a priority

Women, elderly, poor, minorities

I trusted you to make us a priority

Yet again you didn’t come through

So today my allegiance is pledged to truth and possessing an undying commitment agitating for liberty and justice for all

Not you America

Not you

Yorri Berry is a Katrina Survivor and a poet who has granted YourBlackWorld.com permission to offer her thought-provoking poems to the masses. Look out for more of her highly enriching poems. Click here to Contact Ms. Berry.

Your Black Brother: Lost Ones (Revised) - By Yorri Berry

Lost ones (revised)

Dedicated to my former students and young brothers labeled as throwaways

By: Yorri Berry

On his eighth birthday

He doesn't get a bike

Just a prison cell with his name engraved on the exterior

Because he can't read as well as his counterparts a little less tan than he is

And his intellectual inability has less to do with his tanness

Rather his lack of in-demandness

Because his blackness means that he doesn't make the priority cut on their checklist

So instead of buying more books and hiring more qualified and credentialed educators for the underperforming school that never taught him how to read

They add a pair of handcuffs to the inventory list because he'll never graduate anyway

Check the rates

For little colored boys like him finishing high school makes him the exception

So no need for a college fund

No need for updated books and a college preparatory curriculum

No need to build state of the art computer labs when we can just install more metal detectors

Because his name is no longer little colored boy failed by the system, the schools, the inactive daddies held hostage in the prison cell a few blocks down from the one they're building for him, and the high and mighty middle class of educated black folk who dare not care long enough to matter

His name is just criminal

Or criminal junior who looks just like his criminal senior pops he never met

So we treat him like one

And when we walk down the street next to him clutching our purse noses in the air we greet him like one

And when we fail to feed him truth that says you better read until you can't read anymore because by age 18 they expect you to be in prison not college we deceive him like one

Little black boy when I see you I don't clutch my purse

Nor do I perceive you as violent as if you are out to get me

Allow me to inject two pints of reality into your mind

Because young brother the hit is out on you

The racism is no longer blatant

Instead it is covered in whipped cream I call institutionalized

While the media sells wholesale societal lies

That you will amount to nothing more than a dangerous, illiterate, unemployed, HIV infected throwaway

That your life isn't worth the same as the Laura Bush's and Cindy McCain's

And if you don't believe me do a comparative analysis of black men who kill white women versus black men who kill other brothers and tell me if the penalties are anywhere near the same

Lame

Is the fact that when we see your underwear and little tighty whiteys because you're too cool to wear a belt we simply shake our heads

When we hear you use the words woman and bitch interchangeably we simply shake our heads

When we see you chillin on street corners during school hours we simply shake our heads

We shake our heads and keep moving because we didn't birth you so that means you are not our problem

And like much of society we too have given up on you

Throwaway

But I dare someone to reach their clean hand into the garbage can and take back our boys and show them how to be men

Stop shaking your head because they are teens reading on 4^th grade levels and tutor them

Because criticism from afar won't bring about change

See

The birthing of these words aren't for fame
Or critical acclaim
Rather my mind being shaken from mental orgasms arising from reality relationing my brain
In the middle of morning
And right now I'm in the middle of mourning truth confronting me
A newfound peripheral actuality
When I examine our communities
I see slave ships moving down the street
Except they look like you...and me
I'm just a truth-seeking rational being
Bleeding black representative of the need to go back

Not only to examine the past but analyze the present and force a burial of unequivocal jargon that some of us have "arrived"
I have no PhD yet but I'll assert that 23 years ought to qualify my perspective affirming that regardless of how many advanced degree-getting gated community living colored folk out there

If we still have public school systems graduating fewer than 50% our young men then one of our wings is broken therefore none of us can fly
I open my eyes

Only to see his fist effortlessly pounding another compelling me to envision his future in prison or a mortuary
Little brother
Son of a mother who doesn't care
Conceived of a sperm who ain't there
While last night's dinner and body wash was elsewhere
Because he came to school hungry with unclean fingernails
Didn't physically smell
Yet from the look in his eyes I knew his home life was dirty
For change he was thirsty
But the only water I had to offer were the dried up tears I cried last night as
I pondered the fate of his classmates
The one with the fresh Jordan's who could barely read
The one who uses woman and B.I.T.C.H. interchangeably
The one who has the potential to be a genius unable to focus because of his past
The one who hasn't turned in a completed homework assignment since he's stepped foot in the class
Then I think to myself

What percentage of these boys have never used the word DAD

Some days I try not to care so much

Because when I think of him I find myself unable to focus, losing sleep
But like so many others I can't overlook the reality looking back at me
While aspiring bourgeois wannabes are having tea parties and networking socials
I sit here immobile

Emotion filled with tears because I lack solutions
Wishing it was just an illusion
Yet the conclusion to which I have come is that without mental and physical individual and institutionalized change

It'll be a miracle if one of these boys graduates from college
I don't see him in juvenile detention because Jena's America attempts to sentence 28 yrs for fighting
Some look at me like my vision is skewed for not accepting this version of normality
But It'll never be normal to me because its not supposed to be
Each day I drove from work thinking about those boys I cried the entire way home
And I lived 35 minutes away
Apathetic to his pain
Terrorizing my life
When I leave, I still care
Even after I close my eyes in slumber he's still there
Yes

I understand he just may encounter more crack heads than he does college graduates
Still, I'm angry because he can't read and
HELP ME HELP YOU

Directly, indirectly, subconsciously, spiritually pleading
I wonder if King ever got tired of dreaming
Or illiterate slaves hungry for knowledge got tired of reading
I'm tired of writing but my journey and work has just begun
I'm experiencing feelings reflective of needing an emotional gas station
Instead of the violence perpetuating misogynistic videos BET needs to air my 9-5
Monday through Friday intertwined
Harsh realities
Crisis in the community
Yet how many of us are prepared to dedicate our lives to lending Minds...dollars...hearts...hands
Revolutionizing to give a damn
Longer than two-minute tears
Inactive fears
Complacency for future years
Of witnessing historical cycles remain unbroken

Yorri Berry is a Katrina Survivor and a poet who has granted YourBlackWorld.com permission to offer her thought-provoking poems to the masses. Look out for more of her highly enriching poems. Click here to Contact Ms. Berry.