I love this line. I feel the imagery best describes hope shining through the dark.

I'm getting a little pied piper affect?

Honestly this screams, "just be human." It is okay to engage in the nature of your feelings. Sex is natural. One quote i remember from the show sense 8 states, "We exist because of sex. It's not something to be afraid of. It's something to honor, to enjoy"

This is almost like that sense of festering in your own despair because that's what people like to talk about more and what they like to feed off of. The cup half empty affect.

I felt the sense of historical reference in the moment of many societies we have seen through time.

It makes me wonder what people really found joy in. Like why the word archaic? Has it died out?

I love this sense of humanity and the innocence of life. It brings out this feeling of happiness.

This definitely makes me think about the recession (whichever one it may be, but I believe 2008), poverty, and Wall Street. Wall Street and the one percent clearly benefit and do not have to struggle financially, but lower income people have to suffer for them to succeed.

The news has a way of highlighting the homes that have broken windows, broken into, homelessness, etc. Like only showcasing the bad side. And then also showing the depression and the sadness of it all but not really doing anything about it.

Alcatraz from what I know is a prison. And from the stories I've heard of being in prison, you would do anything to get out. So the shooting star imagery is very metaphorical to that experience.

Minorities are always fetishized. Like they are so "wild and exotic." That's what I think of when I see young red tongues. The term red is often associated with Native Americans, which is highly offensive. But it makes me think of the "jungle fever (black people)," "yellow fever (asians)," and "scarlet/red fever(native americans)."

The story of "thanksgiving" comes to mind. The real story. The one where Native Americans opened their homes and gave food to pilgrims but would later fight battles, catch diseases, and die because of them.

Genocide of Native Americans. Colonization of Native Americans.

Indigenous lands are one of epic conversation because they rarely get addressed. We rarely like to acknowledge we live on stolen land.

This was definitely a more postive realistic note than the first lines in the beginning of the poem. It's like saying she's not trying to show her children that the world is terrible so that they can still bring beauty to the world. The children have potential to make it better so you have to show them the potential in the world.

Sometimes, especially living in America, you get to a certain point where this country shows you ways that it doesn't love you back.

I immediately thought about abortion/women's heath rights in America. I also think of pride. Because when you are at a disadvantage as a minority, that pride can bite you.

A lot of times as younger people, we get told that all our problems, all our feelings, will make sense when we get older. But as history repeats and the same lessons continuously have to be taught, when is it finally NOT about being "older"?

History often repeats itself. And you can't meet peace without being at war.

This could be taken in context to our current political climate. Because we have a lot more people using their words to speak out against injustice.

Words are powerful in changing perspective. Because they can flip the script on what people think they know about you and paint a whole new picture. A whole new, complex person.

the power of language is incredible.

this is a strange thing for me because in theater history, we learn that the greek chorus is actually suppose to speak what the theme and conflict actually is, usually before the main characters know themselves.

This puts survival, especially for black women, in a whole new perspective. Like doing whatever to survive or make it even. "four centuries of white male approval" is a sign of the conditioned mentality black women have been taught to believe.

This is truly a sad sequence because children are really dying because of their blackness and being treated with punishment for their existing blackness. And you could have all the proof in the world, and people will still try to make these actions justifiable.

A comment on black lives matter and colorism.

This comment definitely screams, "white supremacy" to me. White supremacists have been a hurricane like force for many years. Somehow they come back with vengence and more hatred.

The desert is symbolism I believe to the white privileged system in our country. Where survival is so desperate and hope is lost. You need almost like a magic wish or a genie lamp to help because nothing is around to help you. I also thought about "black girl magic" when I saw the word "magic."

Very visually disturbing. Descriptions of " dragging his shattered black face," "blood," "punctured," and "liquid," all create a very powerful yet painful imagery.

This is a very powerful beginning simply because it is something you need to read more than once. With poetry, a lot of poets are internally exposing themselves. They get very deep and honest about what they are going through. With rhetoric you are using persuasion and depending on what your message is, it can be harmful to those who listen. Or cause people to do harm to others.

I have a love/hate relationship with America. I guess that makes me a true American right?

So poetic, I might tattoo this on my arm.

This is so powerful! I hate how we have this idea that there is no sense of community and diversity when it comes to immigration! It's only "they are bad and they shouldn't be here." Anyone against that has clearly never seen or wanted to understand the positive aspects of it.

Unfortunately, people can know all the problems of the world and what is wrong and still not do anything about it. In fact, they may profit off of it.

Honestly, I think about hip hop rappers when I read this line. Because even they aren't considered poets, when I think some of them are.

This very real to my own experience in religion. Because if you are not fully devout, you aren't a real "believer."

Artists have a harder time making a living. And it's usually frowned upon for even choosing art as a profession.

Sex work is still considered "taboo" even though women, especially women of color, depend on sex work and aren't given many options to succeed and thrive. Instead of it being considered humane, it is villainized.

Everybody is searching for something to believe in and everyone is searching for the answer.

If anyone has been to Baltimore City in Maryland, this is a visual of the hundreds of foreclosed, boarded up row homes that I see whenever I visit. I know this real for other cities, where poverty thrives and the power of education lacks.

This is a very real problem for women.

One of the most pivotal moments in American history was the election of Barack Obama. He changed what could be and what black people could dream to be.

Black Lives Matter was founded on the victims of killings in America due to police or people who thought they were police. Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling. Freddie Grey. Sandra Bland. They all did "something wrong" that cost them their lives.

I visualize the racial profiling black and brown people have to go through. Simply for existing, police find reasons to interrogate because "you look suspicious." But it's all the systemic racism of American police that dictates whether you get approached. And many of times arrested or killed. You lose rights existing as a black/brown person in front of the police and it is up to them on what could happen next.

It is a shame how in our own country people whose first language isn't English are still looked at as not being American. Or immigrants who come to country not knowing English are treated as second-class citizens. I've seen the videos where people will complain to a minority, speaking in their native language, yelling "SPEAK ENGLISH! THIS IS AMERICA!" It's frightening to think people cannot be themselves, all parts of themselves.

This feels current to racism and homophobia expressed by businesses who refused service to minorities. Black people, LGBT people, Muslim people. It's still very relevant.

Many of times as black people, we have to follow a guideline with police so that we don't end up as another hashtag. But also if a black person is killed, the excuse is always "what did they do wrong? they should've done this."

I immediately think about lost and stolen relatives of black oppression. Slavery, Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration, the black lives matter movement. In aspects of the fact that people were stolen from their homes during slavery. People were stolen fro drug charges and raids that led to vicious cycle of imprisonment. Lost because of the millions and millions of black bodies killed and lost for existing.

I know this poem was written more than 2 decades ago, but I get a visual of our current political climate when reading this section of the poem. Referencing to the Trump Administration and the relation to Russia, it all references a new thought that probably wasn't intended when it was written. But that's the time we are in now.

Trees are the most aged plants to exist. They can be hundreds of years old and still grow with promise. So it's like personification to think that trees have seen what has come before and knows the past. They have seen and heard things though depths in time. So when talking about the trees, you can understand what came before.

I know that in history many, many, many times people have asked for true freedom and even when you achieved some level of "freedom", it was always some catch that felt worse than before. So there is this endless, vicious cycle of oppression from the ancestors who wanted better and dreamed of better that didn't come true completely. People are still suffering and people are still dying. So the whole thing to do is speak out and hope someone is listening.

It's easy to believe in possibilities of what can be from the world when you have so little. It's like visualizing the freedom and happiness that could come if the world was different.

I believe this is symbolism for oppression.

This is very aesthetically pleasing to read. I can visualize the bird surrounded by nature and flying through the sky.