A child was born, dark as night,
and sent out into the world.
Everywhere he turned,
such insults, people hurled.
He took this all in stride,
grew up and became a man.
Took one look at his skin,
it was darker than a tan.
On a mountaintop, he stood,
looking out on a sea of hate.
He decided that once and for all,
he’d be the master of his own fate.
He had been followed for many a day,
even when he’d stopped to rest.
He thought he’d never feel secure,
knew that to him, this was a test.
God, they said, loved him
and he believed it for awhile.
He carried with him, a Bible.
It was evidence at his trial.
You see this man, he finally snapped
on a hot, sunny day in June.
One insult was one too many,
a white man called him, a baboon.
He took his Bible in his hand
and he beat that white man good.
His blood did fill the pages,
it soaked right through his hood.
The Klan, they’d met their match.
Hate finally beat out love.
And the moral of this story?
A man will push back when he’s shoved.
Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2017 Shelby I. Courtland
Now remember, you read it here first. Black people are seriously starting to get fed up with white folks’ bullshit and there is going to come a day of reckoning. So, please continue to treat us like shit and you’ll find yourselves wondering what the hell! Keep your hatred coming and soon we will forget about all of those fake-assed fairy tales your ancestors got us listening to about the Buybull, Jebus Christ and some more religious shit. We are going to stop with the preachyfying and get with the program that we are going to ‘stand our ground’ and ain’t nobody’s day gonna be sunny when that happens. It ain’t here yet, but by all the sinners in church, itsa coming.
shelbycourtland 
Shelby, your poem is a splendid tribute; your prophecy a fair and ample warning.
Your poetry reminds me of what Matiullah Turab said, “A poet’s job is not to write about love. A poet’s job is not to write about flowers. A poet must write about the plight and pain of the people.”
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Peter, I am truly floored by your comment and compliment on my poetry. And as you can clearly see, I write from a pain so deep, I can no longer hide it. And I will not. Words simply fail me in trying to thank you for what you said about my writing.
As much pain as I feel, please know this, I do consider you, a friend!
Again, thank you Peter!
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Thank you, Shelby, and likewise, my friend.
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Shelby, there are striking parallels with religion being used to oppress Maori here in New Zealand – to get them to accept the ongoing theft of their land, as well as institutional racism in their schools, health system, work place and criminal justice system.
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Dr. Bramhall, I am not surprised. If the script works, why change it? They used religion over in Africa. They used it here in the states to get the Indians to give up their so-called ‘heathen’ practices and made many of their children assimilate and so it would not be a stretch for those bastards to use it on the Maoris and on the Aborigines of Australia and on and on it goes.
Christianity is nothing but a means by which hypocrites steal from the poor to give riches to themselves after having brainwashed the poor, gullible masses into turning their worldly goods over to those hypocrites; those snake oil salesmen. How people can be so brainwashed even in this day of enlightenment, I do not know. You’d think by now that even the most stupid would have caught on. More’s the pity that they have not.
Dr. Bramhall, I thank you for your comment.
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” How people can be so brainwashed even in this day of enlightenment, I do not know.”
They need something to hope for in this cesspool of doom; they’ve been knocked down so many times they don’t have enough strength on their own to get back up, so they create a ‘magical being’ that will take care of them when they can’t take care of themselves any longer. Problem with that is there is no magical being, and the best they can hope for is that they don’t have to endure TOO much pain b4 they escape this veil of tears. Me? Anyone pushes me too far I’ll bless them with such a curse they’ll beg for death rather than live thru one more hour of pain! But hey, I ain’t bitter … I ain’t bitter … THE HELL I’M NOT! And anyone going thru the life far too many of our fellow peons are RIGHT THIS MINUTE deserve the opportunity to give that hell back to the PHUQS that can certainly dish it out, but run like babies when it comes time to pay for their mistakes!
Pwr 2 the ANGRY peons!
GUILLOTINE THE TINY-MINDED PRICTATOR NOW!
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Wolfess, bless your heart. You are SO right! I find your comment to be right as rain. I would add more, but I am using a cheap little smartphone
because I have not yet not yet moved into my new home. Thank you for your comment!
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I truly hope that everything settles down for you Shelby — I don’t deal well with stress, and moving is some serious stress so I will keep you in my thoughts and give you a long-distance back rub to help you get thru this move and everything that went b4 … damn, couldn’t we use some serious pot right now!
Hang in there Shelby, and the next time I crack open a bottle of wine I will definitely have a couple of glasses — uh maybe bottles — for you! 🤗 🤗
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Reblogged this on billziegler1947.
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Thank you! I am quite honored!
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This is one amazing poem, Shelby. Of course I reblogged it immediately. Humble thanks.
I read James Baldwin’s *The Fire Next Time* in high school, circa 1965. A few years later *The Autobiography of Malcolm X*. It was my great fortune then, in my formative years, and now.
In solidarity,
Bill
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Bill, I can’t thank you enough for the re-blog and for liking this one and for your comment. Your support means much to mean. And words can’t do justice in helping me express how I feel. They simply fail me. But know that I am truly humbled by what you’ve written. And though we have never met, I would be quite honored to call you, friend
Again, I thank you Bill!
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Shelby, I value you as friend and mentor, quite genuinely. Geography measures the friction of distance — the internet transports me around the world at the speed of light. It’s all very humbling. I heart electrons 🙂
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Right back at you, Bill.
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WordPress can drop my comments into spam folders at inopportune moments — right at the time I was expressing gratitude for our strong friendship. Just as I’m mentioning my thankfulness for the electrons that take away the friction of distance to bring the world to this screen — that’s when it happens 🙂
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You are so right, my friend, the very thing that can bring us closer , can yank our chain when just when we need it not to because we’ve got something to relay that is of importance to us. And this is why I check my ‘trash’ folder, daily because I know this happens, frequently.
Believe me, I would not have let your comments get consigned to the ‘trash’ bin in cyber world. Of course, this means that I have obviously had this problem before. Never fear, we humans attempt to find ways around every obstacle, hence the saying, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” and an even better saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
Bill, I thank you for your brave attempt to communicate despite the fickleness of these devices that enable us to communicate since your message did, indeed reach me.
Take care, my friend!
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Since I was a kid I was amazed at the hate that surrounded me and wondered if this idea of karma could explain it. What I also see is that in your poem you clearly give an option to the oppressed to join the sea of hate and hit back. This is like killing people because of familly honour which is well practiced where I live in the Middle East. Do you condone people killing and maiming because they snapped? What really happened in the pogroms against the Jews in Eastern Europe? To my knowledge they just moved somewhere else. Only since the creation of Israel have Jews stood their ground and fought back but only in defence. Israel could have and still could carpet bomb Gaza and put an end to Hamas once and for all but no-one could imagine that. I lived 20 years in Africa during the apartheid era and apart from the stupidity of it all beautiful things grew in this environment as well. I don’t believe one should use violence if you think the world is against you.
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Michael, usually, I don’t allow comments to directly post to my blog from people I don’t know, but I am going to make an exception in your case.
In my poem, I am not giving “an option to the oppressed to join the sea of hate and hit back.” I am merely expressing the fact that if someone is confronted with nothing but hate from childhood to adulthood, it is not without merit to believe that the likely outcome is that they will not be able to overcome the human reaction of getting fed the fuck up once their tolerance level has reached critical mass. You will not oppress me, discriminate against me, segregate me and then segregate me again in the form of gentrification, deny me a loan, deny me a job, deny me access to a way to make a living and on top of that, come at me with your hoods and your white sheets while continuously exclaiming your superiority based solely on your skin color and expect me to just quote Bible verses under my breath while looking at you, most humbly. If anyone in their right mind expects that status quo to continue, then they need a reality check. They need to crawl from underneath that rock they’ve been underneath, take a good look around and then duck because “for every action, there is going to be an equal and opposite reaction.”
And as for what is going down between Israel and Gaza, Israel has already, all but destroyed Gaza seeing as how if you look back at the maps of the territory that was previously Palestinian, much of it has been stripped from the Palestinians. The fact of the matter is that Israel is hell bent on destroying every Palestinian and they are doing an extremely good job of it. So do not praise Israel for its restraint, for it has shown none just as it has shown no mercy for the Palestinian people. Your example is a really bad one in this instance.
You cannot speak for me and what I have been through, just as I cannot speak for you. And quite frankly, nothing that is in my poem has not already occurred. People have snapped and they will continue to and rightly so. I am not going to continue to “turn the other cheek” just so that I can claim some sort of ‘high road’. Like is going to be met with like, on steroids, eventually. I truly believe that everyone has a breaking point and when they’ve reached it, it matters not how religious they were, there will come a day of reckoning.
A group of people, mistreated for hundreds of years and knowing their history, will not continue to lie down and be made examples of, systematically destroyed and or imprisoned and not fight back in some form or another especially when they are in this country through no fault of their own. You don’t think we are “amazed at the hate that surrounds” us? Do you really think that we are indifferent to our surroundings and so are therefore, blasé about them? We have been marching peacefully for over a hundred years in this hellhole and we’ve got nothing to show for it; no movement forward in all of that time. Peaceful, we have tried and it does not work. And so I re-state, people are going to stop turning the other cheek, they are going to break some cheeks. And wrong or right, it is going to happen!
Denounce this poem if you like, but I do believe in what I wrote and I would not take one word from it. My only hope is that it comes to pass and in a big ass way AND in my lifetime!
Thank you for your comment even as I disagree with it.
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Thanks for printing it.
My wife mentioned to me today that what may not be obvious to all of us is that we can not be a change away from hate until people are not taught to be victims. When I lived in apartheid South Africa I always took my car to this amazing garage. It was quite big and very well run. The service was excellent and they were honest – not many of them are. One day when I collected my car I asked to speak to the boss to congratulate him or her. I followed directions and found his office on the first floor. I was pretty surprised as he was tall very handsome and black. I congratulated him for his amazing garage and as a joke asked if he hadn’t heard of apartheid. He looked at me and not only was he confused by my silly question he answered – I don’t see the connection. I can only imagine what he would have said about our world today.
I believe in personal karma and think my life is more like a puzzle on how to achieve what I think seems right and doing as little damage as possible along the way. True I am not perfect but I suppose that is why I am here. What I think is wrong, is telling people that El-Aksa is being destroyed and let some well intentioned hate filled kids kill people as a zen type reaction. My opinion of course.
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Oh, we are “victims”. You can be sure of that, most unwilling “victims,” to be sure, but victims all the same. We are “victims” of a group of people who could not leave our ancestors the hell alone, but thought it was well within their right to remove our ancestors from their homeland and plant them here, make slaves out of them and then continue to treat their descendants almost as badly.
Get one thing straight. We are not playing the “victim” here, nor are we appreciating “victim” status. We are “victims” of a racist system of intolerance, hatred, prejudice, bigotry and supremacy. We are here through no fault of our own. If I had immigrated from Africa, came here willingly, I would shut the hell up because I would expect to return to my homeland if I was subjected to what descendants of slaves are subjected to here. But that is not us. We have no country to go back to when things get rough. We are a group of people who came from nothing and by nothing, I mean, what slave owned a goddamn thing? How could we be anything but victims when those who were before us were themselves owned? So don’t think you are getting under my skin and making me feel bad for playing the “victim,” here. You may as well have thrown in that I am playing the “race card.” There is arrogance, I detect, in your comment and I for one, don’t appreciate it. You can sit somewhere on your high horse and ‘preach’ to me about being a victim, tell me about an instance whereas an African owned a garage as if all Black people over in America should be owning garages, banks, sitting all up on Wall Street when in fact, there was a Black Wall Street, but guess what happened to it? The whites destroyed it; bombed it from the air and burned it to the ground. They are hell bent on making damn sure that we as a people have nothing; that we have to crawl to them. We have tried to have our own little communities and guess what? The whites destroyed them; the very same type that I described in this poem, those who came in the night with torches and sheets and hoods on, burning towns to the ground. You never heard of The Rosewood Massacre? Of course not, because your agenda is to make it look as though Black people are just sitting somewhere attempting to get on assistance, playing the victim and are refusing to help themselves when nothing could be further from the truth. Whites here are so evil, sick, vile and deranged that they would rather burn our communities down than see us prosper. And it has been done more than on one occasion. You don’t remember those four little Black girls who were murdered while they were in church? It’s called the Birmingham Church Bombing. Four little Black girls were murdered by white supremacists and this occurred in 1963 and yet on June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, an avowed white supremacist, went into a predominantly Black church in South Carolina and murdered nine Black people as they prayed. So, yes, we are victims! We are victims of a hatred so dangerous, so intense, so deranged, so maniacal, so unhinged and destructive that we are just supposed to sit back and, with open arms, continue to embrace it, figure out a way to peacefully stop a deranged self-confessed murdering psychopath and then another one.
You’ve said not a goddamn word about the sheer numbers of hate groups that have been operating for hundreds of years for the express purpose of sending us to hell because we have the audacity to not share their complexion. Why am I not surprised? I am not surprised because you excuse their behavior because they look like you and whitey white ass cannot look in the mirror and declare his ass to be public enemy number one, but that is what you are! Accept it because you own it. So don’t make excuses for your own kind by pretending that their “victims” have no one but themselves to blame since we can’t pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and all become mechanics like your “good negro mechanic.” We’ve tried that and our shops and homes got burned to the ground as did our financial institutions and they were burned down by those who look like you! And so yes, we are their “victims” but only because that is the only way whitey white ass will have it!
And again, I repeat! I sincerely hope that this poem of mine bears fruit, from one end of this shithole to the other AND soon!
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I feel your anger and frustration Shelby. I think some of the most fantastic shit is when I saw a black minister calling Obama the spawn of Satan claiming he had all o you all *his words* in some kind of trance! Then he made the face so popular in old hollywood of a dumbfounded fool. Sickening. I became so overwhelmed with the open murders of black men by white cops claiming they “feared for their lives,” when coming upon a man in his car – et al. So, nobody was punished – I continued to read about Rikers and the abuses there of people who were not even charged with a crime and convicted by held for years. I became so desperate about this horror and the assault on Earth by the military industrial complex (mainly fossil fuels – and the war for them that goes on and on with racist lies about arab people), that I attempted to hasten my exit from this world. When I was in ICU waiting to see if my liver made it or not – a black nurse asked me why I did it. I tried not to talk about anything I knew people just don’t get it – and I told her how overwhelmed I was by the level of violence and murder being perpetrated by police on black people and she said, “That’s just stupid!” It’s hard for me to handle all this horror on top of the hate. Including the Israeli stance which is so Nazi like it’s almost amazing they can’t see it. This was all I could think about and how the world seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket! I’m better now, but nothing has changed. I began to realize the assault on black men by white officers was their way of punishing the black man for our having a black president. That made me even more sick but it’s the only reason there was such a sponsored and protected flourish of murders in custody and confrontation. I feel your anger and I had no way to express mine that would work so it went inward. PLEASE don’t ever go there – and don’t let the bad ones make you act in a way that lands you in their cross hairs as well. Accept the solidarity of people who are sick at the sight of their race having to be seen as inclusive with these evil creatures. I grew up in the early 70s and there was a movement for Peace – and racial equality. I learned that from young teachers as a very young child. It is at my core. I heard all the racist names for black people as a matter of course daily – and then the word of respect was “negro” so I used it. There were no black people in my city. There were no black people in any school (we had 12 or so ) in our town. By the time I was in 5th grade, a black girl was in an orphanage in our city. She was the only black child in the school and I was so happy to see this I went to make friends right away. She was very shut down – I understand why now including being w/o her family – but I continued to be friendly to her. I told my Dad at supper the night I met her and he (in Italian fashion, banged his fist on the table, and spat the food out of his mouth yelling this: Do you want people to call you a nigger lover!!? I was shocked. I thought my Dad would have been proud of me and I never knew this was an issue. When I was 18, I dated a black boy and when my home life was too dangerous I moved in with his sister for a while. After a month or so I was ready to go back home, and I did. My employer took me aside – he was from Alabama and we had a large number of black men working in the kitchen and as cooks at this place which was based in the south but also in our mall. So, he asked me if my Daddy knew I was going with this young man. I told him no, and he told me that people who knew my Dad ( white women servers – who went to the same bars I guess) were talking and I needed to be careful. I saw the way we were looked at when we walked together – and felt the disgust and exclusion from people I was always a part of. I was 18 and I became terrified of that kind of anger and hate. I was weak enough to run like hell. My Dad told me he wouldn’t talk about it but if I ever did anything like that again, I would have to leave home, change my name and no longer be his daughter. Wow. Now – what must it feel like to be black and have that at every turn every moment of your life? I am sorry for the pain you are feeling and I am lucky to be able to hide in my skin – and try very hard not to be afraid when the backlash of anger isn’t hitting me just because I’m white. It’s happened a few times. I was tazed by a couple of teeenagers while I was protesting way back at the Rodney King issue. I was attacked for being white. It’s not fun – and while walking in the park – I have been verbally assaulted by girls in cars who like to call me a fat assed white bitch. All races of people have their pond scum – and the power is on the white side – I’m so sorry about that but I hate that as much as I can – no where near what you must experience and I appreciate your pain and care so much. People today are distracted by keeping up – keeping a roof over their heads, food on the table and then we get to let our minds melt with TV (hundreds of channels complete with binge watching) which removes us from any community interaction and when we hear things we forget because we have short attention spans. I don’t know the answer but thank you for your poem. Thank you so much for showing your teeth so to speak and don’t let yourself be consumed. We all have to try to save our souls – and not with the crap about turning the other cheek – Jesus busted up the temple and challenged the ruling legal class – he was a renegade! Take all the rest with a grain of salt – if it doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t. I learned to let that go and hang on to what I felt was real and true. I hope you too have found a center and connection in the universe that lets you know you are an integral and important part of what goes beyond our understanding and the power holders are never able to take that. They need to lose the power to destroy races, ecological systems, natural species.. it goes so far it’s hard not to be overwhelmed. Keep it going and give yourself peace inside – I feel and care about your level of suffering. Remove yourself from as much as you are able. Here’s an aside – I am from a very racist city (Cincinnati) but while I lived in southern CA (where I was born too) there is no race issue there like we have here. The racism there is unfortunately directed at illegal Mexicans – but not in a violent way – and I felt such a different air there. I can’t say anything about LA, I lived by the Air Force, Navy and Marine bases. Different construct and value system. My husband Bill Ziegler (one of your followers) tells me you are unhappy where you live – if you can make a change – do it. You are worth it and can only benefit.
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Wow! I don’t even know where to start! First, I’d like to thank you for that most heartfelt comment. It moved me, it really did. I am aware that there are many folks who are not Black who feel pain when they see what is happening to us, but they also feel powerless to do anything about it. And like you say, many, many people in this day and age are in survival mode because times are just too tough on people. I, too, was a child of the 70s and I grew up in a small southern town and I’ve seen my share of racism, been called a “nigger” to my face on the job and so have others in my family. My cousin was so tired of hearing that, he went to school to learn how to become a mechanic and now he builds homes for the rich and famous while also owning his own garage. I attempted to come back to Baltimore to open a business and to help here but this city is just too far gone and now I have decided to go back to my little small southern hometown where I will be met with the same racism that I always encountered but this time, I am determined to open my little business and try to help someone there because there is even poverty on the farms these days.
I don’t have all the answers. I can’t stop those who have declared themselves filled with some sort of supremacy to the point where their hearts are hardened shells that just beat out of instinct but with no knowledge of love, for how can they even “love” those of their flesh when they can hate people they do not even know and for some silly reason like the color of their skin. That type of person, I would not trust near me even if he was my daddy, but that’s me. I cannot change the way others feel or act. I can only write from my personal pain and anguish, hurt and the view from where I sit. This was the hand I was dealt and I have been trying to make the best of it. Is it easy living in this skin every day? Hell no! But what choice do I have? And even as I write about it, I am still castigated for doing so for there are those who feel that I am wrong by simply stating the truth. Well, that is their stand and just like my skin complexion, I cannot change what they think but at the same time, they cannot change what I’ve been though, what I’ve seen and what I feel and I’ll make no apologies to them for it. For to walk a mile in my shoes is not something a white person would willingly do for anything. If they had to change places with me, they’d rather kill themselves. But I live being me every single day. I get up and I do it all over again and believe me, it’s no picnic.
But again, I thank you for what I think was a most heartfelt comment and it made my heart hurt to know what you’ve gone through and to know that you would have been ostracized by your father for keeping company with a person whose skin tone was not like your own. Imagine that. Even the people you’d probably least expect that from and still, there it is. I am glad that you are in a better place now and I hope that that remains true for you.
Take care,
Shelby
P.S. I leave you with a little poem I wrote a few years ago.
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Israelis celebrate Independence Day with abandon on the 14th of each May. Remembering Nakba النكبة (The Catastrophe ) is observed the following day, but be aware: it is not permitted to mourn in Israel on Nakba Day, it is forbidden to grieve ancestral family roots past, present and future.
Many Palestinians lived on the Mediterranean coast before their diaspora. Certainly this would be my choice too, since the climate is similar to Southern California. Californians seem to prefer the coast, although some prefer the interior.
700,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed from their homes in May of 1948. They left homes and lives spanning many generations, many family trees (ancestral and olive).
The United States signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 — among its guarantees is the right to return.
http://zenpencils.com/comic/134-the-universal-declaration-of-human-rights/
A skeleton key is a metaphor to represent all the house-keys carried into the West Bank, Gaza or wherever diaspora took the refugee.
What would the Israelis do if the tables were turned? Would they not resist? Yes, they would have the right to resist.
Israel is a laboratory (Alexander Haig called it a land-based aircraft carrier) for testing the most advanced arms and security systems. Israel will receive 3.8 billion dollars from the United States this year.
As much as Obama was disliked by many in Israel, he signed a ten year deal: 38 billion dollars.
Aliyah is the Hebrew word for right of return, but not for the return of exiled Palestinians. Blacks of longstanding Jewish faith are denied, e.g. Ethiopians. Racism against blacks is endemic. Rights for me, but not for thee.
2200 Palestinians were killed in 2014 — Operation Protective Shield, 500 were children.
Here is Google search for these two words gaza + bombing:
https://www.google.com/search?q=gaza+bombing&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiXnaLL86_VAhWT14MKHSNZAGwQ_AUIDCgD&biw=1344&bih=743
Defense only? Were all these photographs falsified?
Did you know that 12-year-old Palestinian children are detained indefinitely for throwing stones (or for having an IDF soldier “report” that the kids threw stones). Either way you have pre-teens detained without charge — indefinitely. By Israeli law. Where is the justice in that? No justice, no peace.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Shelby, your poem does not threaten. It prophesies.
Bill
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Bill, thank you for posting that. Apparently, Michael figured that none of us would have a clue as to what has been going down between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Netanyahu is some piece of work and I mean that in the worst possible way. I have penned poem after poem sharing my grief for the Palestinian people and yet the United States is complicit in what is going down in that region against the Palestinian people but then what’s new? Because this stolen nation is just like Israel, it’s what they do. They steal people, they steal their land and then make said people out to be the ‘bad guy’ and folks like this Michael eat that shit up and belch it out, foul though it is. I allowed his comment because I knew it would be refuted and then some, but I’ll not suffer much more from him and that is a fact. When I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough and I’ve had enough from him.
Apparently, to him, there are only “victims” who want to be “victims without cause.” Well he can take that and shove it! I do not mean to come at you over things I have against his comment but when you posted what you did about the Palestinian people, it just came to the forefront. Please excuse me for derailing your point.
And Bill, like you, I believe that my poem prophesies as well without threatening anything or anyone. It merely tells the story of what will happen when people are past their breaking point, especially when they’ve exhausted all other avenues, as we have. Those like Michael and his ilk can call us what they will, it is not as if we have not heard it before, but be that as it may, he cannot, nor will he be able to stop what is coming and that is what is worrying some. May they worry and worry good! For as long as we are compliant, docile and humble, we are no threat, but the minute we promise to meet like with like to the twelfth degree, we are merely “victims without cause” and how dare us resort to their tactics. We will dare! They can rest assured, we will dare!
Again, I thank you Bill!
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“Adrian,” the above is your comment in its entirety. I did not post it directly because of its content and the fact that I refuse to post any further comments from you.
Now, how in the world did my poem bring forth that? Not one word in my poem had anything to do with Jews and Muslims. This is exactly why I am so glad to have the right to ‘moderate’ comments reserved solely for me because of such as this. If you read the tags, you clearly see what my poem was in reference to and not one word has “Muslim” or “Israel” in it, not even in the category.
How can I be biased about something that I did not even initially write about? Not one word has been written in your comment about what this poem is actually speaking of, not one. If you have some sort of Jewish/Muslim issue/agenda, then take it where it is welcome because it’s not in here. This conversation has gone on long enough especially seeing as how it does not pertain in any way, shape, form or fashion to the original idea for this poem.
I am not Jewish, nor am I Muslim and I was not expelled from anywhere. I am a descendant of stolen people from Africa who were brought here in chains to be sold as slaves. I am a product of that vile and atrocious act, but I am not from people who were expelled, I am from people who were flat out, stolen! What does the Jewish/Muslim settlement issue have to do with what my poem is referencing? I’ll tell you. Not a goddamn thing! Stay on track or resist the temptation or the urge to comment when it has no bearing on what the poem was about.
And with that being said, I will not even thank you for your comment since it has no relevance to the subject at hand. One more thing, ‘trolls’ are not welcome here!
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Michael, that is your comment in its entirety, as well.
As you can see in my comment to “Adrian” I am fed up with this post turning into a Muslim/Jewish argument. And since it was you who originally introduced that subject here and without reason, I wish for you to know that I am sending anything else you send me straight to the ‘trash bin’ because you never even bothered to respond to anything in my last comment that is relative to this poem.
Like “Adrian” you insist on making this about the Muslims/Jews and I will not have it. I allowed some leeway, but that stops now because this has devolved into something that I never intended when I wrote this poem. I don’t even recognize these comments as relevant to the original idea behind by poem. And quite apparently, neither of you were actually interested in it either. You just saw a way to introduce your agenda into the post in question because like “Adrian” you most likely peruse the internet for that express purpose. I have no dog in the Israel/Muslim fight. I have enough to contend with here in America, even though you have totally ignored that fact.
Have I ever penned poems to the effect of sympathizing with the Palestinian people? Indeed, I have. But this poem was not about them. And I am not about to ‘google’ to my heart’s content to provide background to back up whatever it is I have to add to a conversation that I would rather not have happen in the first place about the Jews/Muslims aka the Jews/Palestinians. So, take your agenda elsewhere since it is quite apparent that your initial interest was never in my poem at all.
I will, however, say that people take religion far too seriously, especially when it can lead to wars, which it has. How anyone can exclaim that their religion is all about peace, be they Christian or Muslim is a complete and utter mystery to me seeing as how neither can scream about taking the high road in that regard. Each are filled with nothing more than hatefulness being spewed back and forth at each other. We have enough of that going down without factoring in so-called ‘religion’. It is quite apparent that Christians and Muslims refuse to live on this planet together because one will always look at the other in contempt and hatred and attempt to annihilate the other. That is why I neither practice, nor do I follow any religion because I will not become a mindless drone to be controlled by a pack of hate-filled hypocrites who wouldn’t know about love and compassion if the words were tattooed on their asses; both Jews and Muslims.
Now, this is my final comment to you. Bill can answer to your comment if he so chooses, but I am done. Stick a goddamn fork in me, I am SO done!
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