“What’s Your View” Spoken Word Poetry

Karina Ruvalcaba, Creative Arts Editor

“What’s Your View”

By Rigoberto Mendoza

About to make a living now. Gonna make a difference now.

Pollution killing us blind, I really don’t know what’s going on in these people’s minds. Killing for a living? Or dying instead of wanting to be alive. Feeling like a bee hive. Everyone getting stung every day, while my people just trying to get a pay day. Eating us like paydays. Making me sick, holding me back from throwing a fit. I really wanna protect, I feel like we’re a mess. I really wanna protest. But for what? To make more conflict. To make it seem like we got more knowledge. That ain’t me. I’m just trying to get through high school with straight A’s and B’s. But you know that’s just me. People getting shot, people holding glocks, people getting shocked, people getting shot for reasons, isn’t that?

Why you being racist? Just because we got different faces? Dress or walk in a certain way? Saying to stay in our lanes? Our color too? I’ll still ride with my Blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims like what it do. Saying we’re not the same, but don’t we all got blood flowing through our veins? This world is so corrupt, honestly I feel like we’re messing up. We’re all capable of good and bad, but why don’t we just work hard instead of leaving it like that?

What’s the difference in that, I can imagine having a family in Iraq playing hacky sack, getting bombed just because we’re singing difference songs, but you didn’t realize that they’re just singing along.. It’s sad to see people die, cry and morn for their loss, and then we say it’s not our fault, they’re the ones that started ticking us off. We’re just show off’s, saying we’re the best and how we stand out from the rest.

That’s all crap. Stuff going on behind the scenes, the government preaching that life in America is such a breeze. We gotta stop getting on out knees and begging please. We are a country, we are one, we didn’t need them back then and don’t need them now. So how are we gonna make a difference now?