If The SHoe Fits

Poem by: Dee Parker

They talk about good intentions—where?
All I see are their hands, their eyes, their whispers,
and it tells a different story.

They want me small.
They want my wins crushed, stolen,
or handed to someone else
so they can feel bigger.

Claiming they got my back
while throwing my mistakes
like daggers, using my mishaps for target practice.

Aren’t we supposed to lift each other as we rise?
Push each other to be great?
Instead, some make me feel less
just so they can feel better.

Now I see clearly!
It was never about a team,
never about “us.”
It was always them vs. me.
Now, it’s only me vs. me.
I am my own competition.

If you can’t stand beside me
in the storm,
Why would I need you
in the sun?

Speak without screaming.
Listen without waiting to respond.
Rise without dragging others down.

Learn patience.
Learn listening.
Learn to express without anger.
Rise without tearing.

I keep moving.
I keep building.
Even when the world wants me still.

Because in the end,
it’s all small steps…
to a giant.

( Random Thoughts)
D~ Parker 3.15.2026

D.Parker
Social Impact Designer
darryl.parker32@gmail.com

Whiteness Is the Water

Written By: Dee Parker

They ask why we aren’t free yet.
Why justice still slips through our fingers
like water cupped in trembling hands.

But the truth is,
America is not broken.
It is working exactly as it was designed.

Whiteness is not just skin.
It is the scaffolding,
the courtroom gavel,
the school zone line,
the zoning map.

It is the quiet entitlement in a boardroom.
The invisible hand choking a school budget.
The smile at the museum
while ignoring the bones beneath it.

Whiteness is the standard.
The measure of good.
Of safety.
Of success.
It was never neutral,
it was never meant to be.

From the auction block to the redlined block,
from cotton fields to prison yards,
from stolen labor to stolen votes,
this nation has carved itself
into a fortress of protection
for whiteness.

And when we demand breath,
they give us hashtags.
When we demand land,
they give us murals.
When we demand justice,
they offer us diversity workshops, which in turn, they are quick to snatch away from us.

Because real change
would mean surrendering power,
not sharing it politely.

It would mean rewriting the blueprint,
not painting it Black for a month.

We are not asking to sit at the table.
We are asking to dismantle the room
brick by brick,
until no child chokes on air thick with history,
no dream dies in a cell with bars built by policy,
no voice echoes unheard
beneath the weight of inherited silence.

Until then,
Black liberation will remain
not a right,
but a radical idea.
A vision.
A threat.
A promise.
Still waiting to be kept. 

We will have Black Libration for all, one day, I just pray it's not too late.

Because none of us are free and liberated until we all are free. 

It's all small steps to a giant.
Not So Random Thoughts.
D~Parker 7.18.2025