Southern Statues

On courthouse lawns and

Market squares, by university buildings

and government institutions, down

Long forgotten cemeteries strangled with vines

Statues stand erect in silence

While people are screaming.

These sons of the south

Fearful of change they fly false flags

Invoke broken ideals

Listen to voices from bronzed lies

Erected to no man but to archaic beliefs

But of what voice do they hear?

Which words make them swell with pride

As though their heritage doesn’t equate to hate?

Is it the voice of a quarter million young men

Who would have gladly shed their confederate gray

To till the crops that outlasted them?

Is it the voice of some 10,000 defeated Southerners

So prideful of their roots that they fled their country

To continue their slave trade?

Or the voice of bigots quick to combat civil rights and

Encroaching equality, so desperate to preserve their

Status that they would erect these statues

Years later in reference and reminder

Not to fallen soldiers but to fading power

Not as historical markers but as obstacles

Soon they will all be toppled

These relics whose cracks are showing

Down to rest where they belong

In museums of regret or repurposed for scrap

Their supporters failing to see that

White is not the superior color

But the absence of all