"Power" by Audre Lorde

The difference between poetry and rhetoric
is being
ready to kill
yourself
instead of your children.
I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds
and a dead child dragging his shattered black
face off the edge of my sleep
blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders
churns at the imagined taste while
my mouth splits into dry lips
without loyalty or reason
thirsting for the wetness of his blood
as it sinks into the whiteness
of the desert where I am lost
without imagery or magic
trying to make power out of hatred and destruction
trying to heal my dying son with kisses
only the sun will bleach his bones quicker.
The policeman who shot down a 10-year-old in Queens
stood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood
and a voice said "Die you little motherfucker" and
there are tapes to prove that. At his trial
this policeman and in his own defense
"I didn’t notice the size or nothing else
only the color." and
there are tapes to prove that, too.
Today that 37-year-old white man with 13 years of police forcing
has been set free
by 11 white men who said they were satisfied
justice had been done
and one black woman who said
"They convinced me" meaning
they had dragged her 4’10" black woman’s frame
over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval
until she let go the first real power she ever had
and lined her own womb with cement
to make a graveyard for our children.
I have not been able to touch the destruction within me.
But unless I learn to use
the difference between poetry and rhetoric
my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold
or lie limp and useless as an unconnected wire
and one day I will take my teenaged plug
and connect it to the nearest socket
raping an 85-year-old white woman
who is somebody’s mother
and as I beat her senseless and set a torch to her bed
a greek chorus will be singing in ¾ time
"Poor thing. She never hurt a soul. What beasts they are."

Tiff's response:
Black or white, whatever color, in whatever society, during whatever era, we are full of hyprocisy. Just look at this poem where hate begets hate. To be human is to be a hypocrite. Is it right to condemn others or the system for transgressions we individually are guilty of? Is it right to feel right when we are so unfailingly wrong? And why must we feel better and superior than the other when we ourselves are nobodies, literally beasts of prey? Isn't humility best--who's to judge? Can we be our own judge or the judge of others or does that lead straight to hypocrisy? Is there anything wrong with hyprocrisy if there is nothing wrong with being human? And does anything really matter on earth when we are condemned to unbearable suffering, death, injustice, obscurity, and oblivion?

In my opinion, the jungle is not around us, but rather within each of us. And there's no way to tame what has a mind of its own, a mind that outwits the intelligence and power of our mental faculties, a mind that is a separate beast from our consciousness, but tears at every dimension of our condition, and makes this jungle a veritable hell.