Poem: On-Campus Security
06 Jun 2020This poem is a reharmonization (as my jazz friends might say) of an email sent by members of an MIT residential floor community to advertise a party themed “Dorm Security” early in the spring semester of 2020 (the original email itself being derived from a song by comedian Rob Cantor). Everywhere in the poem that you see bold, monospace text, the original email contained the text “Average black male around 5 ft 6″ wearing a blue backpack.” The original email repeated this phrase nine times jokingly referencing a police description of a suspected dorm intruder. Although an apology was made, for Black folks on campus, this unfortunately served as yet another example of how we were not welcome on campus. Here, I choose to leverage the narrative of the original email to shape a new narrative about the struggle for the inclusivity and security of Black students on campus.
You’re
walking in the halls
There’s
no one around and the lights are out
Out
of the corner of your eye you spot it:
Racism.
It’s
following you, about zero feet back
It
gets down on all fours and breaks into a sprint
It’s
gaining on you!
Concealed
As an honest mistake, an unvetted email.
You’re
looking for your room, but you’ve locked yourself out
It’s
almost upon you now
And
you can see there’s its face on its face
My
God, there’s its face everywhere!
Running
for your life (from the empty promise of
diversity and inclusion)
It’s
louder than the pipes (It’s “YOU’RE
NOT WELCOME HERE!”)
Lurking
in the shadows
Recurrent
Door Surfer sloshing from the streets of America
onto the halls of MIT
Living
in the basement? (William Barton Rogers and
the enslaved people his family owned)
Searching
for a Nelly? (because only a student ID can
un-thug the Black man)
Put
it on a slingshot
Actual
cannonball—iron skin too thick
to let this come between me and my degree
Now
it’s dark and you seem to have lost it
But
you’re hopelessly lost yourself
Stranded
with a stranger
You
creep silently through the trash chute
Aha!
In the distance
A
small hatch with a light on
Hope!
You move stealthily toward it
But
your leg! Ah! It’s caught in our Shit!
Gnawing
off your leg (Quiet, quiet)
Limping
to the Hivemind (Quiet, quiet)
Now
you’re at our party
Sitting
inside: A lie,
instead of a home.