Track and Field Equity (Poem)

When people don’t believe they can achieve their very desire can go into a state of suspension,
As a young manager, I was taught to coach performance on the basis of skill or will, but desire was never even mentioned.
Desire fuels will, and without fuel, as we know, things come to a stop,
And desire is first created and nurtured in the home, but what happens when that home is dethroned of its pops.

Unsure children grow into unsure adults,
And unsure adults produce unsure results.
And unsure results meet a system that is not geared to support,
Or better stated, has created 13th amendment centers for that sort.

I’ll be FIFTY next year, 50 years of a cloaked pursuit,
50 years of trying to be “safe” for others, 50 years of grieving for mothers.
50 years of hearing the talk, giving the talk, and mastering getting along,
50 years of pushing past fear as I see myself in Trevon, George, Breonna, and other lives unjustly gone.

Our country’s history, unsavory to the memory, harder to understand,
That a man wants to own another man to have an upper hand.
But where we are now, not at all hard to understand,
With the abolishment of slavery, upper-hand thinking and some practices did not just “poof” and disband.