This Melanin is…
By Steve Fitzhugh

Like, black gold…precious,
No currency can capture the true worth of its value
Like, the hidden treasure at the end of a rainbow, indescribable…it is
Like, everything good in a childhood dream
Provoking smiles of what could one day come true
This melanin is….
Like, a secret ingredient seasoning earth’s first man
To ever become the flavor of life
Nothing like it…it is, like nothing else
A skin-bound pigmentation, like built-in amour,
Impenetrable protection from the ultraviolet assault of the sun
No laboratory can produce it, no scientist design it,
Only the Giver of Gifts-the Great Creator,
Can apportion it, and that he did,
To the ancestors bronze and beautiful
This Melanin is…timeless, endless, ageless survived
This melanin in you, by fate by providence, alive
Stronger than captivity, a proclivity to arise,
The whip could not tame it, disgrace could not shame it
Hate could not silence it, quiet it, or cripple it
Though man abused it and freedom eluded it
Even dripped, it did, from the leaves of the strange-fruit trees
But this melanin…this melanin is… still…here!
Like a, preamble to a return to glory it is
Like a, victory relentlessly stalking its winning season,
Its triumph, its hour to shine
This melanin is destined one day…
No longer to flow like blood in the street
But, I decree it shall be cherished, to repeat
Its original intended prominence
Civilization’s divine genesis of all that is
Good, honorable, exceptional, noble and true
For generations to come…this melanin is….
In me…driving me…moving me to win
Defeat forever denied by this melanin within,
This be true
So tell us great descendant of old
How goes it, today, how goes it today,
with this melanin…that be in you?