Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Jul 2016
Tell me Maya Lou
  How to be brave like you
Tell me Maya Lou
  Have you seen the news
Because I tell you Maya Lou
   It frightens me, this word
                                  this life
That shadow on the wall
  Just shot a man in the back
With hands up down the hall
It frightens me, the noise the hanmer made
  the life the bullet took away
The big man barks and bares his bullet
  teeth
The man laying on the ground
Watching his skin turn red
  Now a ghost on a big cloud
It frightens me, to see a life slip away
  without warrant or reason
Nothing has changed for Mother Goose
Throw another noose around the lions
  driving cars
     It looks too new
       It must not belong to you
It frightens me, wasn't he suppose to
   protect what he just destroyed
     turning a home into a house
       of joyless stone and wood
What magic or what charm
  can keep their lives safe
   from harm
There's a broken heart
   on my sleeve
For every life lost
For every tear shed
It's an ocean of grief
   and I can no longer
                            breath
Tell me Maya Lou
    I can hear you crying
                                   too
Tell me Maya Lou
   What would you say
      What would King dream
To keep the peace
  To calm the storm
To stop the bullets flying
  back and forth
   forth and back
Tell me Maya Lou
  where did we go wrong
    why is the world tearing
       itself open at the seams
It frightens me, the growing
  flames of hate burning both
    life and love
Tell me Maya Lou
  How to be brave like you
I tell you Maya Lou
Life frightens me...
  to tears
   to tears
Life frightens me...
     to tears
"One day this book will be a relic chronicling a period of insanity and inhumanity, I hope..."
Michael Warr
From the book
"Of Poetry and Protest, from Emmet Till to Trayvon Martin"
Akira Chinen
Written by
Akira Chinen  122/M/texas
(122/M/texas)   
Please log in to view and add comments on poems