MENTALE DILUSION

What has happened over these past years

No one wants to face their fears crying with dry tears

Claiming biology and gender a mith

Who made up all this?

Mental delusion

Who are you fooling

What are you proving

I am who I am without any titles 

I am one man that is my community

I do not have the time or energy to be anything else

With all my inner flaws I keep them to myself  

Mental delusion

Cutting in the biological line

This is not the fight for equal rights

Who are you, are you human?

©Thomas J. Dooley 2024

CALL ME MASTER

Calling me boss 

    Does that make more of a man

Do I have a higher qualification than you?

Are you in my employ?

Why did you grant me such a status?

Are you calling me a boss

    Does that make you less of a person?

Is you three-fifth man?

Compromise with a pen in hand

Banneker letters caused him to have carpel tunnel

Why do you call me boss

    Do you need direction or can't make your own decisions

What is the purpose of a word that puts you in a lower class?

Is it a nice way to call me white trash?

My education and the status of my degree does not say that

Don't call me boss

    It sounds like your loss

That word was chosen to hide the domination of racism

It lurks within the context and tone 

If it was 400 years ago would you be calling me master.

Don't call me boss

Call me friend or call me brother

©Thomas J. Dooley 2024  

IN BELIZE

What is this, I feel? Something so different something so real

Always searching for that path for that plan

Feeling the warm air and the smell of a Caribbean sea.

I want to think of you as you think of me

I want to dream of you as you dream of me

I want to pack up my past and  pray these memories will last

Feel the innocent touch of your hand

Reminisce of the warm breeze in Belize

What is this feeling that has eluded me most of my life

Always looking for that inspiring guiding light 

Laying back to look at a clear blue sky

I want to look in your eye and see that same sky.

I want to feel that warm sun beaming around your silhouette.

I want to taste that sweet fruit and imagine it is a kiss from you.

See the night sky, the bright stars, nothing like the ones in your eyes.

Just like the night sky in Belize

Copyright © Thomas J. Dooley 2023

DARK PAGES

Complex stories are hidden in the past

Nearly forgotten in this journey of life

A pronoun shaved down to a one-letter acronym

When said, it is sharp as a knife

Dark pages of forgotten history

Taking offense through white tears

Dark pages of remembered history

Responsibility is hidden by unspoken fears

Praising a patriotic phrase only for political gain

Then become empty words spoken from a podium

But when spoken with passion on the streets

The evidence of true justice we all hope to see

Dark pages of common sense

A knock at the wrong door can lead to death

Dark pages of uncommon words

Uncommon thoughts lead to an uncommon world.

We march behind an acronym BLM just so as not to offend

But it should be shouted out loud BLACK LIVES MATTER

This banner proclaiming justice for one is proclaiming justice for all 

It does not matter who created this; what matters is that we all believe in it

Dark pages of thought

Original though lost in a social media post

Dark pages of education

No more will we hear the cracking sounds of opening a new book

The gentrification of our human existence with labels

With the cut of the scalpel, we can be anything

Stitched together, forget our original birth

No longer the same; your mother only knows you by a dead name.

©Copyright Thomas J Dooley 2022

HOW MANY

The times are changing the times are getting crazy

The vision of many are getting hazy

Believing the random thought of one's imagination

How many lies do we believe before we see the truth?

While many yell and screen looking like a fool

Karen, this does not have to be you.

Fallowing another man's lie 

But you pray to God every night

How are those things alike

How many times have you played Rushen Roulette with your life

It is better to feel sick for a day

Then it is to lay a week at death's doorstep

The chicken nuggets you eat are programmed to track you

While on the cell phone, you watch housewives acting like fools

As you use pronouns to offend so why do you pretend

How many have to die because of the selfishness you hide

You have no community pride living a patriot lie

Threat to kill because of your ignorance as you act all innocent 

The right to choose offends you now you want to change the rules.

©Cpoyright Thomas J Dooley

 

CAN I CALL YOU HUMAN

Let me call you by your name

Why do pronouns have to get in the way

Can I call you a friend?

Without you being offended

Can I look at you as human?

Instead of looking at you all confused

Trying to see the real you

Let me call you by your name.

We all have a human experience in different ways.

An acronym shouldn't make the rules of my friendship with you

Claiming a few decades of discrimination does not compare centuries of racial pain 

Can I see you as human?

As you segregate yourself in social places and parades 

Selective of the attention you want isn't the way

Let me call you by your name.

We might not think in different ways

If you don't like what I have to say 

We can both go our separate ways

©Copyright Thomas J Dooley 2021

MY SPACE

Within and without in a place to understand what is it all about

Who am I when under all the lies from your lips and from mine

Secluded to the hill, I climb to the top to find what is inside

My space outside is the distance of life; infinite distance is inside.

This maze of the mind, this maze of life held in the hands of time

Never knowing what is beyond the turns, I will find

The guru says many words of truth and many words of lies.

What we think we are and what we think we have become, we hide

Throughout the world, we search for what has always been inside

My space outside is the distance of life; infinite distance is inside.

In my baggage, I collect many things that I have gathered over time. 

Collecting things will not make me free I have to understand the truth of me.

©Copyright Thomas J Dooley 2021