There is sorrow in seeing
strangers weeping and bleeding,
people on the streets needing
a little respect and compassion,
but the cops keep blasting.
While the media is gaslighting,
the whole scenario’s so sick
that I can hardly fathom it.

So, I am using poetry
to process all the horrors I see,
using extreme means
to cut my thin seams,
while deconstructing
the blockage obstructing
humans from grasping
what it means for
a black mother to be gasping
trying to bring back the air
that someone stole from
her first-born son.

Police profiling then rewriting history,
has me on the verge of vomiting
in rage and nausea,
so tired of trying to explain
the validity of a stranger’s pain,
knowing these people
are just as worthy
of the justice America serves me,
as corporations go on
greedily slurping
all of our resources.

My privilege is to see
a blue shirt and not think
that they are watching
and following me,
to not worry if I hurry
cops might think
it’s justifiable to shoot me
in my back
because I’m black.
I don’t have to experience
or understand any of that.

As strange as it may be
to study the history
etched on the faces
of all those grieving,
to feel the shame
of not enough people believing
in what they are seeing;

Having the hand that points to the ground
be the one that forces them down
pushes their face in the dirt,
kicks them when their immobilized,
then goes on to demonize, telling lies
about how they were **** like.

The powerful keep trying to create
then put people in that fake place
that the wealthy claims their race makes
it inevitable that they will go to,
while the rich keep on insisting
that the state is and has always been great,
but it’s time to make it great again.