Divine Light
Divine Light - Muneera Pilgrim
Divine Light
The social contract is broken
Kimberly Jones
When those in ivory towers,
safe from the threat of a system
that sees them as zeros,
cast judgement faster than tornadoes
spin rooftops in the air,
burrowed deep in the bellies
of Black boys everywhere,
infernos ignite, crackle and Grenfell,
like wildfires devouring captured land.
When they regurgitate news
of an unarmed man slain
by police pistol,
life force drained like muggy water
in the bottom of a bath,
and they don’t flinch
because the images the news has quickly gathered
confirm their suspicions (he probably deserved it),
Black boys with their internal organs in flames
breathe fire like purgatory.
It is for our own good;
we just don’t know it.
For they are the lighter fluid that keeps the Earth turning,
the redemption that keeps God
from starting all over again.
They see with such clarity;
their ends are nothing
but a surplus of greys and off-browns,
hutches for houses
tucked in the parts of the city
no one wants to see.
These hot-bellied Black boys
are the lights
and the colours
and the comfort, them and their kin.
Without them the borough is all weeds and no trees.
So when these Black boys breathe fire
from the tops of their voices
like town criers in each corner of the city,
I say
let them,
let them
rise from the shattered glass of the shop windows,
laid bare on the floor glistening
as the sun prisms through them.
When those in ivory towers,
safe from the threat of a system
that sees them as zeros,
ask about broken glass
but not broken families,
because they think we have a propensity to be lifeless at the
blast barrel end of a gun,
I see you, my raging lantern brothers.
I promise you,
I get it.
Divine Light - from That Day She’ll Proclaim Her Chronicles (Burning Eye Books, 2021), © Muneera Pilgrim 2021, used by permission of the author.