America
I saw people crying gas, shedding rubber bullets, while sinking under the law
America you act as you missed a mark and they are essential to a red dot on a forehead.
Target me if you will.
You colored me sour milk long ago.
Spoiled eggnog at room temperature on a consumerist Christmas morning.
And that makes people like me rotten to you.
**** your brand
and expiration,
**** your synthetic hormones.
**** your led.
Take back your cammo and trauma.
America everyone watched you hold him under knee for 7 mins on YouTube.
Pleading to let go,
Gas tears justice out of their sockets and breathe.
America you watched men go to prison and didn’t protest.
America you are more concerned over buying Christmas out of toilet paper.
America there isn’t a **** good intention you won’t red line into the direction of hell.
America why did it take two months for a black man to jog into news relevance?
Why did I learn just last year about a book that directed my friends grandparents to where it is safe to drive their family or go on trips to avoid trouble?
America who writes history?
America, why are you always confused and looking at me, wondering who I am talking about?
Always a privilege to forget and then sweep.
It’s always my privilege to just sleep.
My privilege to watch them die in safety.
My privilege to watch them be detained.
My privilege to only write about it
And my privilege to watch it not be me.
The milk is burning and there is pepper in my lungs.
I tuned out Americana
and gave my knee with Colin
and held up my fist.
And my friends.
And I held them into the air
and showed you they exist.
They are you.
You are them.
America you were there and watched me hold him
And saw his eyes rolled back,
Dripping with milk.
America you gasped and covered your masked mouth with me.
You flinched as you saw the boy in my hands.
Such a young boy.
He breathed and cried gas.
And he still demanded more.
In his eyes,
milk white.
He wanted more.
He wanted to be back in there.
But America you wanted more,
and swept the milk and black under the rug.
Body shaped mounds under your towns foyer rug.
No wonder why you trip every other step and it costs so much.
America, why is 12 and 13 embroidered on it? How much for that?
Why do you wear boots indoors and why do they look licked clean?
America why only one month of excellence is allowed when it’s everyday?
Does economics have to have victims?
Where do you get the money for the rugs but not the streets?
It wasn’t self made and stop saying it was.
It was billions of lives stolen and
now money is no good.
We don’t take chips off of black backs.
We will not rehabilitate your withdrawal from slavery.
America this is only one symptom.
America you are diagnosed and the rug is molding, stiff rigor Mortis
You are and will always be
Rustin,
Johnson,
Young,
X and King.
You are and always will be
Floyd,
Meech,
Harris the 3rd,
Meek Mills,
And Bland.
America you took black and used it for green.
So why do you keep shooting yourself?
What did preparing for war do for peace?
On whose tab?
Did you need blood to ink a dollar?
Or you milking me for it?
America you gun pointed porches and red dotted foreheads,
while they stood hand-in-hand on court steps between your blue lives with black lives risking what matters.
America when will you call this a suicide attempt?
We are sick of being depressed and you are a tree with many branches blacking the sun.
Are you gonna hang with them this time, America?
Or take score beneath a moldy rug you have the privilege of walking all over?
America, the rug doesn’t even cover the floor.