No one can hurt us like family can.

Knowing I’m hurting you ignore or betray.

How can you do this to me?

How can you treat me this way?

You sold me house, you sold me an ideal.

You lied and from me you did steal.

You sold me a loan I couldn’t pay back.

You took my house, or to it I am trapped.

You stole my dream and bought an R.V.

How could you do this to me?

I saw the Lady in the harbor and in this I had hope.

You welcome the tired, hungry and poor, in this I had trust.

But you labeled me as “one of them”, you are not from the States,

You pointed away from you, over there is your place,

stick to your own, don’t pass through the gates.

How could you treat me this way?

On the coal side of the mountains, a small town was my fate

Generations of my family passed through that mine’s gate.

I learned of the Harbor Lady in my small school

I’ve wondered, is it the immigrant or I that are the fool.

Of the immigrant and the colored I was taught to fear and to hate.

If I stepped out of class you chastised and slate.

I am one of your own.

How could you do this to me?

I lived in the land of free and the proud

Long before the whites ever touched this ground.

We battled, we fought and we pleaded.

We lost, we had no choice, we yielded, defeated.

You said you are a nation within a nation; told us learn white ways

Our land and heritage shrinks with the passing of the days.

How could you treat me this way.

My grandfather you hired to make you rich

You hired my grandmother when in a pinch.

I was okay with you getting rich on my sweat and blood

It was the way of things, we all understood.

You behind the iron gates on the hill

And I behind the chain link of the little league field.

You are no longer behind that gate on the hill,

The little league field you rezoned and then sold,

For the good of us all, subsidized housing, we were told.

You moved some place “nice” ….

How could you do this to me?

My grandmother sat for her rights, my grandfather he walked

Beaten, hosed down, bitten they suffered but balked.

Rights they won for themselves and for me,

Only to hear hey nigger you aint equal or free.

How could you treat me this way?

We homesteaded this deed, we tilled this precious soil,

We fed ourselves, and this nation from our labor and toil.

You told us to go big or go home and refused us a loan.

I put on my blue vest and drive past my father’s loam

I weep for my parent, my grandparents, I weep for our home.

How could you do this to me?

Get educated my parents and school said,

It is the new economy, it is the way ahead.

Loans I took out, books I did buy,

Worked hard like my parents, reached for the sky.

Math they did teach me, it doesn’t add up,

Was it scam, was it all a fat lie?

My loans are so large and my check is so small.

How am I ever to pay for it all?

How could you treat me this way?

A dirty family secret was me

Stay in the closet you will never be free.

I dared to hope, I dared to be me,

I thought my neighbors finally accepted me.

I heard a shout I hadn’t heard in years,

Now I am trapped inside old fears.

How could you do this to me?

I said the pledge, I took it to heart.

Like my father before me I stood up and took my part.

I paid for our safety with the blood of my mates,

I paid for our nation with wounds of my heart.

I returned to “buy a green light” and “free pancakes”

You tell me, welcome home, you’ve changed, return to your old life.

I am not the one who left, and I am, can’t you see?

How could you treat me this way?

How can you treat me this way?

How can you do this to me?

Knowing I’m hurting you ignore or betray.

No one can hurt us like family can.

© John D Marten 11/13/2016