16 minutes.
I can make it now.
These words bind me to this seat
The redundancy and propaganda floats passively through the air
Sweetly into my lungs to try to choke me from the inside out.
They raise up their arms to show they know what he wants to hear
They tap the well that is only inches deep.
They fell the closeness of the corpse of the European man.
They wish to crawl inside his graying brains,
Most likely deteriorated into the grittier things of the earth
The s*** of the worms.
They find excellence in his words that they claim they have nowhere else found.
History has looked kindly on him
For the color of his pigment
For the markings on his paper.
10 minutes more.
They are interpreting his patient, martyred word
How is it that we debate the arrogance or sincerity of one European man
When revolutions rise and fall as we breathe
While African tribes organized their politics in ways we have never approached
While China deserves its day on the Blackboard
While the construction of Angkor Wat was not in vain?
Please tell me more of political theory
From one continent, one person, one perspective.
Let their words swirl in a cesspool of precedence, privilege and prejudice
Let them encourage one another to speak the same tired points
Have we not birthed enough attention to this man from our stained lips?
Stained lips- lips stained with desirous juice: a desire to pretend to know
Pretend to care
That we're all as wise as what we can't interpret
From a dead man's misrecorded history.
3 minutes
My heart pounds with the rage to throw my notebook and scream
"But who f***ing cares?!"
Will he tell us why we've enslaved one another
Or why we diminish education in the name of efficiency?
What does he know of a dying world
Polluted with the arrogance of a rising western tide?
Fight back this rage, I say,
And uncross your legs
Smile at the short man in the front of the room
As he feels as tall as a statue in the polis
Claim your patience
Call upon your breaths
No one knows what you carry in your hand
Let them feel wise for today
Let them suffer in the storms of ignorance
For lack of desire to breathe the sweet, forgotten air.