Poetry: ‘And I Think To Myself’

I wondered in my Black molasses skin as I heard
Louis’ raspy voice lull ‘What a won­der­ful world’.
Did he wear some kind of spe­cial glasses?
That blot­ted out our oppres­sion and sep­ar­a­tion of classes?
The riot­ing and bru­tal­ity the police issued
Because today, I don’t see trees of green, red roses too.
I see the poor turn­ing green with envy
For the polit­ic­al blood-stained money.
I see red roses but not in my coun­cil estate
Where pave­ments are painted in blood red because of hate.
‘I see them bloom for me and you’
Mis­ter Arm­strong, I sin­cerely wish this was true
But instead, I think to myself what a wicked world
‘And I think to myself what a won­der­ful world.’

‘I see skies of blue and clouds of white’
Louis, those clouds have changed from1965
At this moment, every­one is try­ing to com­bat with the swine flu attack
The clouds are filled with bombs going off in Afgh­anistan, and Iraq.
These people don’t look to the skies for the blue often
As most of the time, they are encased in a con­crete coffin.
‘The bright blessed day, the dark sac­red night’,
My fam­ily is being killed for their faith while the media looses sight
Sorry Mis­ter Arm­strong but there is no blessed day!
There seems to be no peace or hope for a weary stray,
For us in the land of liv­ing who is try­ing to make lem­ons into ‘ades.
Did I men­tion the fam­ines, the wars, the can­cers, and the AIDS?!
And I think to myself what a reck­less world.
‘And I think to myself what a won­der­ful world.’

If there is one thing I can agree with in this song that makes me cry,
It’s that the ‘The col­ors of the rain­bow so pretty in the sky’
Because it’s the per­fect sym­bol of hope in the centre of this world’s circle,
Cap­tured by the light filtered through the rain prism, to give me purple.
My favour­ite col­our, same as lav­ender, pre­cious amethyst, and auber­gine,
I long and dream to exchange my rags for roy­al robes belong­ing to a queen
So I can leave this for­saken hatred of the injustice we call the sys­tem
That sys­tem­at­ic­ally arrest, quest, for­gets, and throw you away into pris­on.
‘Are also on the faces of people going by’. Well not now, not any­more Lou!
The dis­ad­vant­aged youth would paint anoth­er pic­ture as most of them die before 22
You sing, ‘I see friends shak­ing hands say­ing how do you do’
Friends become foes as eas­ily as we turn cold because death is noth­ing new
Mr. Arm­strong you may sing ‘They’re really say­ing I love you.’
I say don’t be mis­taken because “love” have lead to rapes, greed, and abuse.

Chil­dren grow­ing up without fath­ers because the adults are reck­less,
And moth­ers giv­ing up on their chil­dren because they feel help­less.
‘I hear babies cry­ing, I watch them grow’
But I see babies being smothered before they reach one year old
Baby P is just anoth­er one in our stat­ist­ics
News­pa­pers ques­tion how social work­ers missed it?
I say because like most of them, we close our eyes to the untold
Horry stor­ies but we say, ‘They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know’.
Yeah Mis­ter Arm­strong, I grew up and have learnt more that you’ll ever know
And now I can think to myself, what a waste­ful world.
‘And I think to myself what a won­der­ful world
Yes, I think to myself what a won­der­ful world.’

By Dionne Wil­li­ams

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Dionne Williams

Dionne Wil­li­ams is a psy­cho­lo­gist, writer, co founder of ‘Afrwecan’ black men­tal health char­ity and act­iv­ist for Racial equal­ity.

Latest posts by Dionne Williams (see all)

• Poetry: ‘And I Think To Myself’ — Feb­ru­ary 1, 2017
• Decol­on­ize The Mind: Is Black Cul­ture Selling Us Out? — Janu­ary 18, 2017

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