Do you see color yet?
Or still all just black and white
Photographs of lynchings where the fire is the only haze
Everything else bowing to the blaze
Black bodies remembering centuries of ashes to ashes

Do you see color yet?
Or has the whole world gone blue
Waves upon waves of ocean where the wake is all you can make out
No woke to be had
Eyes filled with salt and sea

Do you see color yet?
Or have you retreated so far into your suburban sepia
Paint samples and fabric swatches a collection of neutral
Tinted windows in your SUV with the leather seats
Passing a pulled over person wondering what did they do

Do you see color yet?
Or is it just the basic hospital hue
N-95s and shields and gowns too engulfing to show you the truth
Disease coming to claim the same fruit of the first hot suns
A morgue swelling with deflated lungs

Do you see color yet?
Because I thought you saw red and white and blue
I thought the banner was sacred
But you wave it upside down in the rain
Below the snakes, skulls and killers worse than
Cain

Do you see color yet?
Because I thought I saw you searching
Seeking knowledge, direction, messages, instruction
From a supercharged white background multicolor engine
Algorithmic multichromatic alchemy
I think you do see

Bright white
Light bright
Walter Cronkite
German shepherd bite
Club and fight
Eisenhower, Dwight
States rights
Urban blight
Uptown out of sight
White

Let me ask you something tonight
When did you become white?
Was it 1776 or 1865?
Was it over the Atlantic or at Ellis Isle?
Was it under a moon or over a cloud?
All while

You waited for a pink morning
To deliver you the dawning
Of a clear blue day
Where you could walk a red brick road
And fry up some green tomatoes
To eat after you bronze your cheeks
Or let it happen naturally on a beach
Riddled with a golden gleam
And the same sand that gathered on the shores in 1619
Watched necks battling knees
Please
Tell
Me
You
See

Color.