sometimes
you just
dont know
what to
say..
your mind
will just be blank.
your words
will just fade.
your heart
will just tighten.

but even then
you will be

okay.

She can walk
          between
             night and day
               never letting either
                  get in her way.
She learned this trick
                     many moons ago
                                by
                     going deep within
           and never letting it show.
Her soul is innocent
her heart is pure
she’s gone through more
than most could endure.
            She’s an angel of light
                 an angel of dark
                 you never know
              what you will spark.
                      You want to hurt her?
                         Please, go ahead and try
                           she’ll be the one to show you
                                  just how well she can
                                                              f
­                                                                l­
                                                                ­  y.
                                  Her soul innocent
                    her heart pure
      but never think for one minute
that she’s not secure.
                                Say what you will
                          please, do what you must
                       but your jealousy and hatred
                             won’t waver her trust!
~

“choose your hugs wisely...(the hug has to spark joy.)”


the pandemical advice columns arrive
unceasingly,
mostly repetitive, causing/repairing minor league
glitches,
but stumbled on the advice above, dumbstruck,
flummoxed
and yes, by god, even that poet’s favorite,
gobsmacked,

thinking wow, great advice,

for the entirety of our remaining days!

poetontheroof

a father to a son
riding bikes by

the river

correcting his son
that it is not an

ocean

it is just
a river

and I wonder
if this will

reduce the son’s
wonder at this

important body
of water

will he think it
less important

rather than not
as large or not

as deep

as the father
probably meant it

police
brutality
breeds
mob
mentality.

how
do
we
fix
the
world
before
the
next
fatality?

I am the shadow of trayvon martin
Lying on the ground just as he did
I'm black just as he was
I wasn't planning to die that day either
I wasn't threatning nobody either
that day
The gunshots echoed
just as loud
when I was shot down as Mike Brown
yet his name echoes through the streets years later still
mine followed me to the grave
They don't care about me it seems
If I cried "what about me"
Who would ever see?
because my hashtag has even been drowned so deep in the depths of R.I.P's that I can't barely breathe anymore
When we think black brutality
Why do the names of trayvon
Mike
Tamir
Sandra
Rush to our heads just as fast as blood once rushed to theirs?
Does my black life, too, matter?
I can't blame you
That there have been so many deaths due to oppression and police brutality that they all seem to sound the same
No matter how loud we scream Black lives matter
We will never be seen as the living
But the potentially dead
We cry for justice to a system that's no longer built to accept us
A president that tries to forget us
A black voice will always be too loud to a world who never intended on listening
Who am I?
Besides a hashtag and a t-shirt with my face on it?
A black lives matter sign and a melanin fist?
A statistic?
I am black excellence
Regardless of how much sin you may see in my kin