Colorless

Vishnupriya 

No matter whose-

Dreams have no hue, tears are color free,

Breath’s a-color, pain’s colorless,

Yet some only come colored for others

Seen through a prism of color

Running an unequal race through life.

Why does color lurk around us

Choking our breath and voices

so we can’t be heard or seen,

when we were born to breathe?

And all the killings looked upon

As a collage of numbers, not names

because the dead were once human?

Why are most protests labeled 

riots toppling passive status quo,

And marchers body slammed, teargassed,

pepper sprayed when they’re to be revered?

Why passive bystanders unlistening in
'battlespaces' don’t get prophylactic from a disease

festering for centuries ready to erupt

now that it can’t hold anymore?

Why is justice denied because

life’s strangled, peace put on choke hold,

The clock hands have much to unroll?

Not wanting more hate to unfold,

And systems to implode, push to

deconstruct  the broken, the shattered, 

Rebuild outside the margin of color,

So we can all breathe like siblings

In the land of the brave, not depraved.