If My Skin Were Blue

If my skin were blue
would the difference frighten you?

Would you treat me strangely?
Gaze at me as if I were from Mars?

And, if I spoke with a lisp or blemish,
a slight accent, as if I were a foreigner. What then?

Would you act politely, make me special,
put me on a pedestal, make me your showcase idol?
Put me on TV like some celebrity or clown;
teach me tricks, have me repeat your mockeries?

Just today I was at the airport.
The man in the uniform followed me.
I felt his eyes penetrate me.
I felt the anger there.
He seemed to know.
He seemed to want me to do something, prove him right.
He’d made up his mind long ago.
Men like him will never change.
Men like him will always be.
I smiled. He was disarmed, befuddled.
I walked up reached out my hand in friendship.
He looked at my hand as if it were a gun.
Blinked. Blinked again. Turned away, backed away;
disturbed, as if I were a leper, an untouchable…

Men like him will always be among us, watching.

I hear there are rebels now, poets
among us,
those who would deliver us
from this blue depression… singers,
of new lays and stories, uttering futures
where we are free
to move about without hostility,
without feeling
we are prey
in a world of hate;
but then, something happened:

We no longer know who we are,
wherein we’ve been thrown,
where we’re going to,
from what land we came from; and, mostly
we’ve forgotten what it means
to be blue
in a blue world.

Forgetting history is a terrible thing. Who will teach us
to be blue again?

Maybe we should begin by singing:

………… “I sing of the beauty of blueness:
of the sea that is blue,
of the sky cerulean,
of the blue-sparked stars at night,
of the blue smooth flesh of my sweet love’s kiss and midnight shadings;
the folds, resolve to the blue-black measure of her curved light’s breaking…”

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– Steven Craig Hickman ©2015 Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited.