New World Manifesto

A Poem

Photo by Kilian Seiler on Unsplash

And the “gods” said:

Let us make man
in our own image.

Let us paint this world
in muted hues
of grime and granite;
and cover eyes
with greyscale,
forcing minds to decide,
“black or white?”

Let us convert the earth to canvas
and convert the creatures to Christians
and pervert Scripture to prescriptions
for healing this God-forsaken land.

Let them worship us.
(Lord knows, they’re godless.)

Let us save them.
Let us tame them.
Let us name them . . .
Boy
Gal
Indian

Let us take —
I mean, create.
And call it
good.

© Micah Josiah, 2021

Note: I started writing this after reading the first few chapters of “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson. The following passage at the end of chapter four inspired the title and theme:

“It was in the making of the New World that Europeans became white, Africans black, and everyone else yellow, red, or brown. It was in the making of the New World that humans were set apart on the basis of what they looked like, identified solely in contrast to one another, and ranked to form a caste system based on a new concept called race. It was in the process of ranking that we were all cast into assigned roles to meet the needs of the larger production. None of us ourselves.”