Chains by Matt Barton

I saw a man in chains once.

A boat barely afloat on some remote shore; a man who spoke about it and found himself lost for speech, crossed, impeached, his self-seeing this broken boat with men on the decks bedecked in chains and pain on their faces. The feeling seeing it was something new, a tool on which time’s twine spool was to make a fool of me, a pool of my tears and a jewel of the years I spent as a free man. Free man. As though the words brought up blood, a red flowing flood of the bought years I have been alive while these men were sold.

Black men in chains.

Back then the people saw and ignored, bored of tawdry slaves and gods dismayed to see them enslaved. A law paved, drastic action for every inaction, each hateful reaction, a piece of paper decades late, hate claimed a mate in war and factions dead in awe of every lax day they bought a man who wasn’t up for sale.

Equality builds a bridge gilded with stones and the bones of us that would die to see it built, I am no Martin Luther, but I would make a King the man that fought with nought but a dream and hope of the future. Quality defines us and all we do, and the cause we fight we fight anew.

It is seen.

Seen for what it is, and it is right.