On Independence Day

our “founding fathers” did not father
me,
because if i had been approached to sign a
“declaration of independence”
from an empire that committed atrocities against me,
of which me & my buddies were able to
list on parchment,
then i would think that those same buddies of mine
would be able to include the ¼ th of the document
excluded in its final publishing,
wherein the atlantic slave trade had been criticized---
yes,
i think that me & my buddies would of had to
free those hundreds of slaves who had been
working on our own individual prospective
estates,
AT THE VERY LEAST,
as something of an obligatory
prerequisite to making the outright obnoxiously
hypocritical claim that
all men were created equal.

but alas,
these men whose predecessors crossed a huge body of water
to flee an empire & its
vile mode of taxation,
had no problem waging genocide on the indigenous
population which they encountered when they got here---
they had no problem giving them blankets infected with smallpox &
taking part in the systematic extermination of
nearly 100 million native people
(estimates show a reduction from 100 million to 1.8 million
occurring between the 1490’s of columbus & the wounded
knee massacre of the sioux by the US military in 1890).

they had no problem sending boats back across the
atlantic to
rip apart whole families & drag them through the
middle passage, killing at least %15 during the
voyage alone---
one has to wonder if those
tormented & tortured through bouts of scurvy, dysentery,
smallpox, syphilis, measles, overall malnutrition &
treatment as cargo, being beaten by the
cat o’ nine tails relentlessly (often for just being
depressed (melancholy) during the
maafa,
were rejoicing on july 4th, 1776, when
1/3rd of those that signed the declaration of independence
still
owned slaves---
including jefferson, the primary writer
(owned at least 130 (sold off at his death).

for those that argue that some of these
“valiant” men
wanted so very badly down deep in their
hypocritical hearts
to free these people that they
enslaved & used to build this country that they
stole from those that originally lived here,
one should then ask why the constitution,
being primarily composed by james madison who
owned “106 slaves as of the 1820 census” &
who had owned & sold them all his life,
saw fit to characterize them as not even whole
people, making them
3/5ths instead.

shouldn’t juneteenth be celebrated now alongside this
“independence day”---if freedom is what is really being
celebrated?
(june 19th, 1865, being the day 2,000 federal troops
had to force those in galveston, texas,
to finally abide by lincoln’s proclamation)
i wonder if all the native-americans who are descendants of
the victims of US genocide would want a day to commemorate the
end of that---
i wonder if there is enough gold in fort knox to even begin
paying back a people that we tried to erase from this
planet.

perhaps one should just forget the whole thing,
go outside,
down a beer & shoot off some
roman candles,
right?