"Poems To Set Us Free"

To dream of dying, the ghosts of ebony
are poems of old, hidden in books to be told.
Slaves in nameless graves working on their knees;
the crack of whips upon their backs in the farmer’s fields.

Innocent families once free, now hunted down;
running and hiding with their children through the abyss of night.
Sold as slaves in a world of gain, claiming a false democracy;
the hidden social equality, reserved for the high and mighty white.

Living in freedom, free to come and go as they please.
Their slaves enslaved, oppressed, degraded and mistreated;
forced to the side of the street, beaten near the forbidden fountains
in your land of false equality. Where is your sign of freedom from slavery?

Our blood a sign to flow in graves, crying out
for mercy, men of peace to pray to God for salvation.
The need to heal our families, no longer slaves weeping away for pity, please.
O Ghosts of Ebony; "Let us rest in your poems and set us free."


Note!
Having read Doug Rainbow’s review below, I believe it to be a better understanding of concern for the abused slaves in my poem.
I have posted this as a rider to the poem, hoping it will help the reader form their own conclusion. “Will the Ghosts of Ebony ever rest?”

Embe gives us, in the stirring rhetoric of the civil rights movement, "Poems to Set Us Free." He looks at the history of slavery in America and voices of the past raised in protest, as battle cries, and as poetic pleas for release.

The debate has changed. Battles have been fought and won. But the history still lives and it is still relevant. The Ghosts of Ebony still cry out. “The need to heal our families, no longer slaves weeping away."

A rhyme less presentation in a loose four stanza structure, "Poems to Set Us Free" resonates with powerful and compelling word choices.

What will it take to cleanse us of a shameful chapter of our history? Goodwill? Time? W.E. B. DuBois thinks it will take the forgiveness and grace of the oppressed. The Ebony Ghosts are not ready to rest.

Doug Rainbow