Right Time, Right Place

We're told: right time, right place. As if destiny 
was a random passage, was simple coincidence: 
            as if histories of bondage were mere eventuality. 

A thing waiting to happen, but more a guarantee 
to some instead of others: their color or  countenance   
           wrong for their time, wrong for the place. Capacity:

an appetite for increase. People as possessions, a destiny
made manifest. Annexed through maps and by insolence,
           histories of bondage made mere eventuality.

Expeditions, missions that fed colonial fantasies
by canon, intermarriage, war and other forms of violence.     
            Wrong for their time, wrong for the place; no destiny

should demote what poets call possibility. Galleries  
bloated with artifacts— o weakness and blind love of opulence,
             as if histories of bondage were mere eventuality. 

What face looks back from this mirrored topography?
Your musk, your brown, your brilliance that you held back  
            until you were told right time, right place. As if destiny 
            is history and bondage a given—the inhumanity.