When you say you don’t see color

What I hear is there is a version  of me

that fits within your comfort zone

my black canvas with all of its rich

melange of love and pain formed in lips

cotton bone and golden chemistry 

handcuffed to the sculler of your destiny

and yet you find to be selectively blind

render me invisible so as to not remind

of now and then time 

and your attempt to be kind

by being colorblind only confirms the inability

to determine the difference between 

dandelions and hellebore—unaware

and refusing to see the variety of the Creator.

When you refuse to look at the night

you cannot appreciate that which is beyond.

//

I am the canvas 

brushed over in stardust with 

galaxies for eyes

\\

I am not the bleached version you hold

in your selective vision [your choosing, where I am still not free]

in your bias prison

(c) 2024 Tshombe Sekou