Brian’sPoems

Life Is Fine

...may be a barefaced lie.

I just read a poem
written by a young man
living at a Harlem YMCA
while studying English.

He’s come from the South,
but has traveled even further,
transcending time and place
to tell me his story.

It’s not too unusual,
or even too improbable,
but it’s a black man’s story
written nearly a century ago.

And it’s not a story
that everyone knows,
unless they understand it
from personal experience.

Not a tale
we all want to hear,
it asks us to grapple
with our own stories,
to consider, perhaps,
how our happy ignorance
makes us utterly complicit
in the face of great evil.