I wake up early in the morning,
before sunrise, putting on
My coffee stained shirt
blue jeans,matched with sneakers

I promise it’ll pay they say,
As 5am winter winds attack
my face,making holes in my face
like the ones in my jeans.

Work “Four times harder” they say
You’ll almost make minimum wage
You’ll be able to make rent they say.

There is no time to play, theres
no time to rest, growing up
was my only means of survival
$8 per hour, 6 hours per sleep.

Sleepless nights in shelters filled with
papers,essays, my child crying,
reassuring myself, it was all
for him,his future.

Work “4 times harder” they say
Promises and luck won’t help ya.

As I sit at the church pews, asking
both the lord and my ancestors
to guide me, for they understood

A system that does not want me.
Bearing, their name on my tongue
and their pain on my back.

Work “Four times harder” they say
Your headaches, back-pain will go away

Numbed by advil and antidepressants
that mixed with midnight tears, fears
of the flickering lights, that mocked
me, of my poor state, gunshots
becoming the stars.

As I cuddled with my child,holding him
tightly, between his fingers, I gripped
for hope,relief and momentary sedation.

Work “4 times harder” they say
Your net worth is 5$ total
You’ll get out of it eventually

You’ll get out of it eventually

I did every day of my life
“Four times harder” Created bars
bars, bars ,bars, that trapped me
reminded me,suffocated me,entrapped
my being, chains cuffed around me

As “master” mocked with freedom,
integrity and safety.
a black womyn like I
Will never succeed
unless I comply,
While my grown sons body
will be surrounded by these
4 bars of entrapment
his fate and I are similar but not alike.

No barriers but the projects, stoned
together by poverty,drugs and violence
Governmental systematic genocide of our black
bodies.

“Four times harder” is one, to be white
two, to be male, three to be privileged
four, to be American.


Unreachable,unteachable,standards
“A nigga with a book,should be feared”
Unreachable,unteachable,standards
that has trapped, the modern day Negro.

Four times harder, say it, four times harder,
echo echo echo, in the prison halls
as the prison cells filled
the bodies,dark as night,darkened minds
believed in illusion, that four times harder
Was reached,

I am between these bars.
Between that line, four hundred years
Of struggle, that I will one day
Redefined.

-Hallima Docmanov ( 5/15/2015)