How Does the White Man?- A Harlemite

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 How Does the White Man?

By: Aryan Mukherjee


How does the white man live this way with his own brethren?

One plucked from the ovule and the other the petal,

Both brewed and simmered in the same dirt pot,

Yet the darker is evicted like gas from a kettle.


How does the white man leave us to his toil?

Our pockets run dry and our palms scathed like field rows,

The same ones we were promised to withstand never again,

And yet here pass the thorns of this feigned ruby rose.


How does the white man dispose us like dregs?

He takes the Constitution which he consecrated and swore by,

And wraps it delicately ‘round our very necks,

And strips us of pride, made a lynched martyr to glorify.


How does the white man sputter out with distaste?

The word “Negro” like venom as if he wasn’t the fang,

Rounds us all up like hogs in the pig pen of Harlem,

And sets flame and ruination to our humble black gang.


How does the white man simply live with himself?

He claims our craft as talent as if it were his own right,

And yet drives his ol’ fuzz* to impale us from behind,

As our songs turn to wails that are drowned out by the night.








*Fuzz was a slang term used in the 1920s to described the police force


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