The Black Rose Poem by Jasmine Williams

Some days I feel like I cannot win,
I pick myself up and fall again.
Heartache drums against my chest,
with an anxiety akin to cardiac arrest.
My heart throbs with sadness.
My soul rages in anger.
Injustice is mocking me again.
My virtue stolen, my future chained.
The past I am beholden,
to an emptiness and pain.
Why is it that I am never free?
It seems I'm running out of time,
While running from poverty.
I'm running out of hope,
While wishing for prosperity.
There seems no end to sadness.
My family has driven into madness.
A thousand whips across the psyche,
Wounds inflicted too many lashes.
Deep Into the flesh they sear,
Beyond the scars of hurt past years.
My days are marked by a president's insanity.
Long ago, my country fell for greed.
Now, my people sell themselves for self-hate and vanity.
No one is to me and my children's defense.
As race soldiers in white hoods come marching in.
There's a price on my head for having black skin.
Still, I am lucky to be alive.
I'd rather be dead than spirit deprived.
What shame it is to see my dreams denied.
I often cry in the darkness of night.
For I fear that I will lose society's fight.
When the storm roars loud, it silences my cries.
When the skies grow black, it shuts my eyes.
The world is waging against me to destroy my pride.
There is no one standing with me that I can rely on.
And there is no one else but God too confide in.
Deep inside myself I hide.
On the darkest days such as today,
There is one thing that gives me faith.
Just beyond the road it stood.
Standing the test of wind and flood.
It brings me hope and strength
The courage to fight reborn.
It is the light of hope that dares shine too bright,
threatening to burn the dark of night.
This is hope spurned from remnants
Of the buried, beaten, and scorned.
It snipped of most of its petals and thorns.

A black rose stands abandoned forlorn.
A black rose stands weathering the storm.