The Laundry Of Race

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life

THE LAUNDRY OF RACE

The sorting of clothes is like the segregating of races.
Both are thought to break the mechanic trend.
Darks separated from lights –
whites…then colors.

Load after load,
one must load all colors, races, spirits, fabrics,
and add a detergent Tide to the dyes which have already been cast.
Then press COLD-COLD.
Cold, so as to not let the colors mix and bleed
cold, like the world in which we live all
cold just so that everyone can stay together and
wash…rinse…cleanse…

Separate those articles, which mean something to you.
Those that are delicate and expensive,
or tattred, shrinkable, and –
weak in the knees,
WE stood together for days on end on the mall with Martin.
Marchin’ for a brighter and better future
not for you or me,
for he or she,
for theirs, you, yours,
but for us, our future, our children,
our humanity.

Yet still we separate for the second time in this monotonous household activity.
“Regular” or “delicate.”
There is no in between,
just like the “no in between” continues in our
continuum of crazy conceptions.
But we still
separate.
That which is deemed delicate is taken
away from the hurricanic washing sea, and taken
special care of.

“DELICATE,” because it is not
“REGULAR,” so does that mean it is
“IRREGULAR,” which is continually placed on the opposite end of the continuum?

So we place it into the heat of a drying, spinning, cycle.
Peel lint off like Harriet’s scarred flesh.
Turn dials to go like he did to Rosa.
The cycle continues and we close the door;
out of sight, out of mind.

But cries still ring out.
Change, which still remains
its value constantly changing with our economy,
which you have become too used to
time after time, rinse after rinse.
And the cries never stop
because this cycle never stops.
And you don’t care.
So we stay,
neglected laundry sleeping unbothered
in the belly of the world.

And the truth is
we all stand for something which still needs its voice to be heard.
Yet we keep yelling at eachother with Sam Cooked voices
that “change gon’ come.”
But I don’t know when that change gon’ come!
And it’s funny
that the separation of cotton has become routine,
because the routine of separating cotton
is where this all began.