Suture (On Haiti and D.R.)

There is no border only a suture

Stitched by stigmas.

Our states have holes in them

From sticking to their guns,

Stigmata.

The only things bigger than the earth is our prejudice

And faith will move mountains

But it cannot budge ignorance.

An island divided amongst itself cannot stand.

We are broken, being pinned by the paralysis of empire.

Rwanda reminds me of Republica.

I was taught to hate you,

Echoing whispers spread like notes in a classroom.

Do you hate Haiti? Circle yes.

Want to see Stockholm syndrome?

Visit my republic, where slavery is ugly

But our slave masters are beautiful.

Little girls wither in the mirror

Trying to get that hair just right

Wishing they were just White

But our blood is Triguena, Morena y Negra,

Como Cela in la Sierra Maestra.

We are masters of this bestia.

Our island was the 1st Black republic of this hemisphere.

And I want to tag that in big block letters on the 1 train,

Because it’s easy to forget.

We are laced with lull lullabies that lose track of our lament.

Listen to the mountains.

They DJ “Fight the Power”.

It’s evident that PE sampled Haiti.

Its #1 export isn’t sugar, its revolution,

The Panther’s original source material for fighting the imperial.

In fact, we should open a chain of stores

In front of the hotels built on the most famous of shores.

It’s slogan would be:

“Stomping out European colonialism since before eighteen-O-four.”

You see, we used to be powerful

We used to be whole,

But centuries of surgery left a suture

And there are no borders any more,

Only scars stitched by stereotypes.

Come to D.R. if you want to deconstruct a duality.

Research how far a people can be pushed before they hate themselves.

Our conditioning is sick.

And on the whim of others a border was stitched.

The truth is they have sutured borders into all of us.

Secluding our Afro-centric sentiments.

That’s why we straighten our mountains and bleach our lands,

Segregate our cities and privatize our sands.

Pero yo, soy Aytiano.

And God does not make borders,

Only mountains.