A TALE OF TWO CITIES

The sordid tale of Bruce’s Beach

Presents for us a truth to teach

The path we choose might still defuse

The simmering strains of racial bigotry

The putrid odor of past misdeeds

Befouls our senses, bravely pleads

To recognize and demonize

The hostile acts bequeathed to you and me

No pious plaque nor ceremony

Can stem the stench of rank baloney

Ejected raw by hate’s defenders,

vile pretenders to the crown of White supremacy

With ball and chain bound to our limb

Our shameful past emerges dim

As childlike, we frolic in the foam

of faithless waves which cannot cleanse repugnant acts

The T’s were crossed the I’s were dotted

The KKK’s were nowhere spotted

Respectable and proper

turned the turgid gears of government-sanctioned hacks

Unbroken trail despoiled with hate

Continues to the present date

Disguised and camouflaged

with windy legal terms and history distilled of awkward facts

No finer phrase could mark the weal

Had Willa Bruce cried “Stop the Steal”

While writs and wrecking balls

joined forces in concerted demolition of a noble life

Defying odds with bravery

Emerged at last from slavery

This family stood with stoic pride

Against the stealthy mob with sharpened knife

A century fouled by prejudice

Now forced to peer in the abyss

Where undead lay the crimes of

Unexamined racial strife

Confront the past? That’s too much trouble

For those protected by the bubble

A bistro beckons, a nail salon

A reckoning disturbs uneasy mind

The fault’s not ours they feebly bleat

Faux innocent heirs of rank deceit

Reparations, restitution

overwhelm the privileged kind

Half-hearted claims abet their fight

Yet truth denied seeks out the light

As history reinforces fact

These are the ties that bind

No ‘Cancel’ shall obstruct this tale

Of Founding Fathers we falsely hail

They rest uneasily beneath

The gaudy mansions cruelly sown

They’ve left their mark they couldn’t know

A hundred years from then would grow

The fetid fruit descended from

These cultivated characters unknown

And now the final act begins

Redress is called for elders’ sins

Truth will prevail we will atone

As curtain falls our past we own