Worse than hatred;
The blanking hand
Demises those blanked

And withheld acknowledgment
Disappears the subject of a self
As if it were a ghost
Of no magnitude or apparentcy.

A crime to be blanked
And yet also,
Crime in the one who blanks,
For the racist cauterises his own
Wholesome self in the violence
Of his denying

And lies as injured as his victim
In the victimhood of his division:
No longer seeing all the beautiful
Faces who are the whole of him.
Half his heart he disowns and cuts
From his being, settling in to the
Fraction of the self remaining,
So colourless and drained,
And denied of life’s real meaning

In the face of otherness rejected.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015