Whats in a name?

How could I truely use the handle Poetic Justice and never spit any poerty? Fact is I couldn't so here we go.

This poem is set up by first giving the inspiration of it. Which is none other than Paul Laurence Dunbar. Poets and black folks reading this if you arent familiar with that name ya need to goolge it and read about him and his works.

We wear the mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
in counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
we wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from toutured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the city is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask.

Great poem by a great man....He aint the only one...

My mask don't smile no more!

My mask dont smile no more
It has stagnated on a stone faced expression
Associated with depression mixed with
years of suppresion translating into the regression
of an entire race.
It now sees the inner soul of which it once disguised
the lies it told are no longer necessary,
by any means.
It seems as if my mask is tired
Tired of having to smile
in the face of fallacies that are as
easy to see through as the visitation window
that seperates families
Our past is as vivid and brutal as almost any in the
history of the world
We weren't the only group of people to have ever been treated this way
but what we are, is the most recent
Decency, kindness and respect
were traded for entire family rapings and hangings by the neck
killings of the strongest men just to keep slave quarters in check
public beatings if labor quotas weren't met
My mask still smiled

Disenfranchised by the capitalist demise of we.
under the disguise of being free
Eighteen hundred and sixty five would see
the birth of the Freedmans' Bureau
Broken Promises
or was it broken promiscuity
because for years their foot was ONLY in our ass
on our neck
most any prepositional phrase would do
but now, seemingly, all of that was through
all they did was free 22 million people that
didn't have a clue of how to live and what to do
Slavery slid from physical to economical
40 acres and a mule mutated into a pipe dream
and Spike Lee's production company
and we were free to be...in debt and owing the very masters
that previously owned us.
My mask still smiled

Things haven't changed much.
As a matter of fact, according to Chinua Achebe and The Roots
"Things Fall Apart"
And whereas before that may have been a bad thing
now I'm inclined to say, it's about time!
We can't keep running in the same circles we have been
We're dizzy
We can't keep gnawing on the bones they throw us
We're not getting full
And we cannot keeping wearing
the mask that grins and lies

Immagitatcha!!