The Sensitive Boy Slumber Party Manifesto

BY JOSEPH CUILLIER

This is a poem of inciting subversion of the state.

I.

America,

You’re breaking my heart.

George Bush doesn’t care about black people

And I’m in hell.

I am the scholar with his truth.

America,

What if someone killed your son?

The White Army killed another unarmed Black man.

Do I protest by not dancing?

Do I sing like a sad James?

America,

I’m sorry.

Sometimes I forget that I’m scary.

I don’t want you to be afraid of me

Because it’s scaring me.

America,

I want my deliverance now,

While I’m here.

I walked up to heaven’s gate and White Jesus asked me,

“What your black ass doing here?”

II.

America,

What if the police killed your son?

After being away for a while I went home

And saw my parents in a new light.

My father and I share more than just our name.

America,

What if the police murdered your son?

Mother’s teach your daughters

The way they wear their hair is a political statement.

We are throwing peebles at an unjust institution.

America,

You did such a good job marketing that gun fight.

It was such a success.

Everyone showed up and died.

It is revolutionary for a country to put itself on trial.

America,

Unleash your psychopaths on your own children for a change

I think they’re getting bored with the taste of my flesh.

I want to feel like a child right now

And that’s not a bad thing

III.

America,

If the police murdered your son,

What would you do?

When you get older you realize how often adults are wrong

And God’s on no ones side.

America,

Your love won’t be safe with me

And your narcissism won’t keep you warm.

My dog eats better than my neighbor.

Kill the poor and renovate their homes.

America,

How many times do I have to tell you?

I’m not on your side.

Sit me with the degenerates who can’t get to work on time.

I am a serial killer in a nursery.

America,

I don’t believe what you believe and I am right.

If you don’t do this you won’t be beautiful

But skin creams won’t make you any younger

And those diet pills just don’t work

IV.

America,

Someone killed your son.

Everyone says they want to be free,

But we really just want to be social.

American Christians believe morality is too left wing

America,

How much is it costing you to keep us poor?

Only radical gestures can dissolve the cynicism

But everybody’s just trying to finds new ways to do nothing.

Nostalgia is a trick

America,

Now we’re building freedom schools in the ghetto

And teaching radicals.

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation

Will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

America,

You stand in my way

And get annoyed when I say “Excuse me, sir. Will you step aside?”

You must be America.

I think I’ll call you America from now on.

V.

America,

We are killing our sons.

We’re establishing resistant groups, armed militias, underground presses, and subversive newspapers.

To be labeled "America” is a sharp sentence for a heinous crime.

Children with rich interior lives.

America,

Every empire has it’s place in history.

This empire will fall because it is irrational.

A classroom full of eager students

Scars on their faces and toothless smiles

America,

If I’m so dumb how did I out smart you?

It’s easy for me to say what I will not eat when I’m not hungry.

Let’s celebrate our sickness.

But do not resist the White Army.

America,

When I was a boy I thought a gun was a toy

But now I’m a man.

Ferguson is a synecdoche.

We’re on the other side of the American flag.

LANGUAGE INHERITS

                                                 POWER RELATIONS

The New Freedom School is an art initiative inspired by the Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights Movement founded by Joseph A. Cuillier III.