Animals

A thousand did not fall at their side
Nor ten thousand by their right hand
It was not they who tore down Rome
Nor sent the last of the Caesars into exile.

It was not they who slew a hundred thousand
In the Holy City, Christians, Jews, Muslims
Three faiths, one God, all their blood the same color
As it stained the boots of the Crusader knights to their ankles.

It was not they, who with alcohol, gold, and muskets
Would purchase generations, even centuries of Black lives
Nor carried them in chains and squalor across bright oceans
Who said at Ouidah and Ferguson that their lives did not matter.

It was not they whose eyes saw the glory, and made of us, two great tribes
Blue and gray, bayoneted, burned, shot and memorialized into our nation
A war won, yet still fought, bloody wounds held open by greedy hands
Who sell hate like drugs to the huddled masses of our own teeming shores.

They did not kill six million, nor send new suns on Silverplate wings to stop it
Code Talkers, Tuskegee Airmen, Go For Broke and fight to build a new world
From Sea to Shining Sea, from Tranquility Base to the depths, for all mankind
Let freedom ring as we live each day twenty-six minutes from the Apocalypse.

They did not do these things, We did. It was Us, They're not tearing down the world
The world our grandparents, red, brown, yellow black and white all bled for,
We are, we who walketh about like roaring lions, seeking whom we may devour.
They are not the Animals, Mr. President, we, White Men are...and we made you.

Deal with it.