When the Ancestors Interrupt the Parade
Before this poem begins, understand one thing:
Every year, America rolls out its pageant of forgetting—
its televised trance, its balloon-animal mythology,
its butter-soaked praise song to a history
airbrushed into a Hallmark postcard
and served up as “tradition.”
But beneath the marching bands and gravy boats,
another rhythm thumps—
the bassline of ancestors tapping on the nation’s ribs,
reminding us that land remembers
even when textbooks don’t.
The soil keeps its receipts.
The wind keeps its own ledger.
This piece is for them—
for the ghosts who refuse silence,
for the living who refuse the sugarcoat,
for every spirit that knows truth
is the only offering worth laying on the table.
This is not a celebration.
This is a calling-in,
a waking-up,
a counterspell.
America’s Hoodoo Feast
I refuse to celebrate
this annual séance of denial—
this turkey-stuffed, football-drunk carnival
where the ghosts of Indigenous nations
rise like smoke
from the cracks in the sidewalks
and whisper,
“Remember who fed you before you learned to forget.”
But America’s got amnesia.
A curated, televised, corporate-sponsored forgetting.
Giant cartoon balloons
Float down Avenue of the Americas
like pastel overseers,
hypnotizing the crowd
into a trance so deep
even a thunderbird couldn’t wake them.
Screens glow.
Brains dim.
Algorithms hum lullabies
to keep the masses folded over
like prayer rugs
beneath the weight
of the American Nightmare™—
a centuries-old con
shaken and stirred
by robber barons
who stole the land
and now lease back the dream
with interest.
The ancestors circle the feast,
side-eyeing the gravy,
calling out the hypocrisy:
“How you gonna feast on a story
that was cooked without truth?
How you gonna praise a nation
that still hasn’t paid the bill?”
America,
you’re built on stolen earth—
and that’s why your politicians
move like slick conjure men
hawking snake oil
in red, white, and blue bottles.
That’s why folks bow so fast
to the next bully king
wearing a crown
of reality-TV reruns
and Diet Coke foam.
But listen—
freedom ain’t a hand-me-down.
Ain’t no salvation
in a ballot certified by billionaires.
A nation isn’t free
until everybody is free.
And that freedom
will never come
from kneeling before the throne
of the latest grinning pharaoh
with a Twitter scepter
and a gold-sprayed ego.
No—
freedom comes
from the people
who remember the old songs,
the land that still hums,
the ancestors who refuse
to be edited out.
I refuse to celebrate the lie.
I stand with the ghosts
who demand the truth.
I stand with the living
who know the spell
can still be broken.
-Bearz
11.27.25