We Are the Trees they Could Never Chop

We are the Trees they Could Never Chop

We bear lingo
Fashion
Hairstyles
Dance moves
Without us, would there still be a YouTube?
Without us, would you know that conjoined twins could be split into two?
Without our women, would yours know about Birth Control pills and fallopian tubes?
Without us, would you still have our 40 acres and a mule?!
Without us, would you have the White House as your stool?

You use us as a tool
Diffuse of us our juices
To generate your joules
Jealous of our jewels?!
Drool over our features
But dilute us in the gene pool

But—like water, we’re everywhere
In your ice creams, ice teas
Shoot! Even in the air—
You breathe
The blood, sweat, and tears of my ancestors
My mother’s ancestors
My father’s ancestors
My grandparents’ ancestors
My great grandparents’ ancestors

How far back do we need to go?
To show your unnatural need
To kill off
The shepherds of your sheep
The women who sweated so you can eat!
The men who broke their backs so you can sleep!
And still pay us cheap…

You act as if all these acts you can sweep
Under the rug of history books you keep
In your underground layer called the “Subconscious Heap”
Where all you “eerie-deemable” acts creep
And the feeling of unworthiness without us runs deep
Which makes your guilt of torture your forever torment--
Because you knowing the truth that you are a carbon copy us
Cuts deep!

So in wolf’s clothing
You treated us like sheep
Silenced our truth
But we’d peep
That the existence you reaped
Is only through the shadows of
The backs you’ve beat,
But never broke.

We are the only tree they could never chop!
And we’ll grow, evermore.