this man,
and this woman.

this man,
and this man.

this woman,
and this woman.

this person,
and this person.

this love,
and this love.

Custom cannot wither, nor age enslave
My infinite array of memories.
I came of age upon a wave
Of ideals that anchored
Changes and elders outraged,
Appalling them into rage.
They often responded
With violence, yet we endured.
Even when comrades were shot down,
And protesters run to ground,
The promise of a new world grew in secret,
In the impromptu families in hill towns,
Or the remnants of Haight-Ashbury
And the minds of Lost Boys and Girls unbound,
In the survivors of Kent and Jackson State;
Our dream died not but elected to wait,
And In the choices of all
Not to succumb to servility
Nor women to proscribed maternity.
Equality stayed the rule instead of resignation.
Now, age has slowed but not stopped us
And we reach out across the air,
Teaching young ones, as passionate as we,
To distrust despots, ever serve the cause of liberty.

They call me *****,
Ching chong expecting me to sing along to the bing bongs of Christmas.
Christening myself into white culture.
As they tried the ***** and native American,
Now Asian.

They call me a *****,
a man with tools.
Shovel, pick axe, and hammer.
Digging for gold but also watching my head,
For the white man’s jealous, silver bullet.

They call me *****,
a man with dignity in another’s land.
With metal and not a whip in my hands.
Building a future for them,
Model minority for them alone.

They call me *****,
Silent, physically weak, and emasculated,
but silenced in a country that is meek and of no value,
Where the colors red, white, and blue mean more than your color,
(Where) God Bless(es) the United States of America.

Maybe I am a *****,
Crawling in mud and sleeping with pigs,
A Feminine man finding strength in gambling,
Drinking liquor looking red,
Chinks ******* white animals for fetish,
Fool to English when although they cannot speak more than English themselves.
Yes, English, a borrowed language they call their own.
To slur relentlessly with a white hood of superiority.
I see no future without fury from my culture,
Hated and euphemized without limitation,
Hath hell come down on them now.

Still I am a *****,
With a face yellow and a soul chicken,
Clucking around with little thought or agenda,
for the white people and only the white people,
alongside the negroes and native Americans.

Hurt by this country but never broken.