Courtney Stoddart

Denial

I am a powerful tool
I can make you ignore anything that you choose
Deny that pain came from the bruise
Deny all hatred from its very roots

Disguise the lynch mob and hide the noose
Pretend the berry wasn’t hung strange fruit
Burn all the pictures of the children smiling
While behind them the black man hung dying

It may have been slow or it may have been instant
Depends if the neck snaps with the resistance
But who cares?
You took the pictures from a distance

Act now like you don’t continue to colonise
Act now like you don’t see the tears in my eyes
Your denial is there to save your pride though
My denial is for my very survival

Pretend that I don’t see the weight on me
Feel the burden of as it’s race placed on me
Be polite and say thank you please
Say 'bless you' after you sneeze

Pretend that we both don’t know that we’re different
Like we don’t have a completely different take on the world
Like we don’t know how your privilege occurred
Like the white man didn’t say first came his word

So I adopt your ways to move beyond a slave in chains
To move beyond waves and a ship
And I’ll pretend that you’re not still cracking that whip
And you’ll pretend I carry a chip on my shoulder

Damn right I carry a chip it’s the size of a boulder
Older though I may be
Still you try to separate me from me my dignity
White asses twerking right in front of me

As if we hadn’t been doing that for centuries
So should I be polite and say ‘go Miley’?
In preservation of your white fragility
In resurrection of white Christ on me

Well please tell me where does his judgement be?
For I feel I bear the weight of the cross on me
You steal with the state and the cost is on me
Don’t cross me in debate your lies are lost on me
You seem shocked when I say it
Like it’s a mystery
For the sake of fake colonial history

Doesn’t take a genius to work it out
Please tell me now
To which lord you are devout?
Please tell me now
How you afford your big White House?
Built on foundations of denial
Cause you used my ancestors for your financial survival

Where did your inheritance come from?
Is it tea, coffee, gold or coltan?
You can try to deny it but I know this was your plan
Daylight robbery and your white snobbery it’s your devil philosophy
That you place on me ever so politely

And I’ll try to deny that white righteousness
Isn’t the price for this
Isn’t the cost of freedom
Cause it seems to me the cost of freedom mental or otherwise is denial
And white capitalism is using it for its very survival

White state snakes in
Like a burglar he breaks in
He rapes children
Raises stakes on skin
Places rope under chin
And hangs

Bio

I am a poet and peformer from Edinburgh. I am passionate about reimagining and constructing new ways of seeing and being in the world. I intertwine elements of political, social and historical discussion into rhythm and rhyme.