HOWL OF THE RETURNING EMPIRE

I saw America’s ghost screaming in its own reflection,
the colony wearing the crown,
the rebel holding the whip.

I saw Jefferson’s bones crack under the weight of rent,
Fanon’s fire burning in Harlem windows,
Mamdani whispering “You forgot your own revolution.”

Landlords are redcoats now,
tenants the barefoot army of Yorktown reborn.
Police badges shine like imperial crests,
and the Bronx smells like Boston, 1775.

O empire that began as a prayer for freedom,
you became what you fled.
You conquered the map,
but lost your mirror.

Now the colonized tongue returns—
Queens speaks Algiers,
Harlem chants Delhi,
Brooklyn hums Accra.

You wrote the gospel of rebellion,
and the world sends it back in your own script,
each word a mirror,
each protest a prophecy.

Mamdani stands where Adams once stood,
his fist full of rent receipts and revelation,
crying, “Decolonize thyself!”

And I saw the Founders rise,
their ghosts shivering at the sound,
their ink dissolving in the same fire they lit.

America, your circle closes.
Your revolution walks again—
barefoot, brown, and burning.