The porch sags under heat and history’s weight,
Faded columns clutch the stains the years can’t abate.
In the night’s dark reign, old blood remains—
Over sun-bleached bones, on rusted chains.

Magnolias wilt by the locked iron gate,
The stifling air turns sour with hate.
Peeling paint, as pale as ancestral skins,
Masks the mold of unspeakable sins.

Under the porch’s veil, they rock and jeer,
Repeating the lies they’ve nursed for years.
The shade hides the chains their stories have made,
Binding the present to crimes never paid.

The town’s sharp tongue hisses venom in prayer,
Doused in bourbon and stagnant air.
Deacons pass the charity plate,
While bruised knuckles pound on judgment’s gate.

In the scalded fields, the sharecropper’s son
Dreams of running—shackles undone.
But past and present knot together tight:
A rope, a badge—both claim their right.

A whitewashed statue scowls from the square,
Casting long shadows over those who dare
Remember the lynchings, the crosses ablaze,
The lawmen whose justice still stalks these days.

They sit in God’s shade with their cold gin glass,
Tongues dripping scripture on every pass.
The shade guards the creed their fathers made,
Where sin sits cleansed and the guilty are praised.

In every haunted glance, each muttered name,
The blood-soaked soil denies any blame.
So sip your sweet tea, drown the lament,
While the darkness feasts on the innocent.

And when night, heavy, presses the frame,
You’ll hear the house whisper who must bear shame—
For here, in God’s country, the soil still bleeds,
And the earth cradles the nameless lost to unpunished deeds.