Nothing
will reinforce your idea
of white privilege like
a trip to Texas

Forget the jokes,
the wise cracks about
pick up trucks, inbreeding or secession
Far too often humor
gives ignorance a place
to hide, but
so does Jack Daniels
and Lone Star
and unsubtle 10 year olds
throwing shade at each other across
a soccer field, the epithets
slipped in beneath every
"Good game."

You can try to flinch
Can try to feign surpise
Try "Not me."
Try "color blind"
Try "one sixteenth"
Try "some of my best fr.."
Fuck it
Try "post racial society"
and see if it don't catch
on the frayed noose stuck
in the back of your teeth

This is yours, this
cellular inhertance
Its not the Atlas boulder you
claim to have cast off, but
an unfortunate pedestal
whose thin air height
can hoodwink even the best of us
into revisionists
I know, because
its mine too

I used to think that
I had the right to deny it
That my blood, cursed since
we were framed for the spear
in the side of a messiah
That my people
hounded out of every inch
of good dirt this earth holds
arrogantly convinced me
our holocaust was the first,
only and since, that
the barbed wire Star of David
lodged in our veins branded us
"Other" and "Entitled"
The blue and white borders I fly
have since bled into the rainbow banner
of the men and women I choose
to bring to bed and so many
"Other" flags flown that
my common blood red beneath
all of this, has been bleached
into gray

But
I can choose
whether or not to
show you this, to
split the stitching and spill
every bit of bi-polar, queer
little Jew boy of a man
at your feet
Never forgetting that
I have the privilege
of camouflage
I can...pass
Even in Texas

The process of owning this
starts with questions
genuine and concise

Then

try silence
try listening
try shutting up long enough
to hear
try realizing the difference between
appreciating other cultures and
holding them hostage
try more questions
try thinking
try learning
and then
if your own camouflage
tricks ignorants into thinking
you agree with them
try facts
try reason
try educating
try reminding them
of every chain rattled
of every blocked border
of every auction block
of every internment camp
of every holocaust
Try taking every run together color
underneath your skin
and paint their pedestal
so bright they can no longer deny
that it is there