COVID-19 presented respiratory challenges to the world. If that wasn’t difficult enough to live through now, I am George Floyd.

Unable to breath,
I sleep with the light on tonight, wondering if there is any light left in America.

And just like that my heart split in two, stained with black grief + ache for my black kind. My African people. My American brotherhood. My family.

I cry.
No longer able to numb myself from reality. If there was ever a challenge with loving each other - as black & brown people - my prayer is that it cease.

No matter our peculiarities, differences, social status, ***, last name... I LOVE YOU and I see

I must continue each day loving my black & brown people- stranger or familiar- with each sun rise and every sun set. I won’t let my fear of the unknown prevent me from loving you. For my next eight minutes + forty six seconds may be my last breathe.

Black is a colour often we misread,
according to evolution,
most superior human, it means.
All the dominant alleles flushed into one,
and still the recessive ones are able to prey upon in day’s sun.
What have they done no body questions,
we are white, they are black, kills all the discussions.
Leads to the final stage where death is the reward,
for something that is genetic, it is pretty rough accord.
All the people then come together,
still the predator walks freely,
what has happened to humans,
have they lost all the emotional ability?
I stand with victims, you should too,
as for no one is black nor is white,
everything and everyone is grey even in day’s light.

There is another pandemic
Sweeping across the country
The more pigment you have
The more you're at risk
If you disobey
You die
There is no end in sight

I heard there are riots
downtown for George
Chauvin is going to fry
In more ways than one.
I don't think it will make things better.
But it's a start

Billowing smoke fills the sky —
Evidence of our Presence,
Our tragic War Cry,
Our fight for Convalescence.

Fire is a language —
Brighter than words;
Brings more damage
& equally absurd.

Violence is a tongue —
The scream of the Unwanted —
Echoing from sore lungs;
Yet, we are not daunted.

No fear, break the gird —
Refuse to be unheard —
Fire is our Word,
Violence is our Word.

Black

Is it a crime to be black? Should i be castigated for my skin color?
Am I less of a human? Or is the fear that I am more? I’ll leave that for later.

They say black lives matter but does it really? They say their neighbours are black, that their barber down the road is black. They try to relate to everything black except what it actually means to be black.

The white eye don’t see what the black eye sees. The white life don’t don’t feel what the black life feels.
How can you play down a fear that you don’t feel? A fear that you instilled.

Tomorrow isn’t promised but that doesn’t give you the right to take away my tomorrow today.
I tell my kids they are the leaders of tomorrow but that is if that they can get through today.

The victims could have me or you. Sadly could still be. Think of the ones that have been brushed aside, with no camera or evidence to prove a thing. Think of the pain caused over the years. The worst part is? This is not a one-off, painfully It is just a matter of time before this happens again.

So do not tell me how to feel. I don’t tell you *******. But it does seem like you do pick and choose who to ****. Would you still be you if you could pick? That is for you to answer. The blood that you’ve spilled, it’s time for you to answer.
If we are picking and choosing I would pick repeatedly to be

Black

I passed through the airport in Minneapolis once.

Maybe, we brushed elbows in the security line. We took off our shoes side by side while they poked through our luggage.

That's when it hit me: there are so many people I'll see once and then never see again. Like, one look is all I'll get, for life!

I walked straight through the metal detector and never looked back.
And now, I keep my distance: six feet away as six feet under, masks as muzzles so that we speak only in glances.

I should have given you a better look on my way to the gate,
before the flights to our final destinations.

Every meeting is both a reunion and a rift.

Strangers like us move apart
with each hollow hello or comment about the weather.

I mean, what if every meeting like that was a loss?

We are good as dead to each other
on arrival and departure,
footprints swept clean by
the wind created from dead bodies
walking the other way.

I should have said this to you
about the virus
as proof of our survival,
how we’re in this together, how your loss is mine.

Each new disaster,
natural or otherwise,
keeps seizing our lungs and
our last breaths like we have
nothing to say.

I have died a million times
Master's whip
Has left my back a million lines
Each body left broken
Connections lost
Cut a million vines
Each body left breathless
"I can't breathe" the words screamed a billion times

You ask me why I build The Wall, isn't it obvious?
We are in the middle of a ******* plague, we are loosing heart.
Some of us have become "Comfortably Numb."
I envy my friend that's in a mental institution, he remains
blissfully unaware.  His thought's are Obscured by Clouds.
I paid him a visit the other day, and when I left, I left laughing, because he said, "Shine on you Crazy Diamond."
But then my heart broke because as I walked away, he yelled,
I Wish you Were Here!" I turned around, and he was crying.
I got out in the parking lot and it felt like I couldn't Breathe.
My girlfriend called while I was driving.  She's a conspiracy theorist, she thinks it's Us and them.  Sometimes she blames God, saying,
It's just part of The Great Gig in the Sky." When she doesn't take her meds, she thinks her Mother might be in on it, that she has a Saucer full of secrets.  Me, I'm at a losss...I think we are all just aPiper at the Gates of Dawn.  I dedicate this to my girlfriend *Vera.

What’s opposite of a teacher

I have thanked them all
For what I am
But wait master Ji
What about the glass half empty

No!
No credits to thee
For the ignorant, indignant,
insolent -me
For indecisive, irrational -me

For teaching the logic of convenience
Over the struggle and friction
then enabling to veneer the meekness
with vainglorious diction

“Sit  down” for “How?”
“Shut up” for “ Why??”
You didn’t even,
ever let me Try!
Branded the doubt as foolery
and ensured that my mind
be all but free
Yes, all but
Free!!

Contouring my thoughts
with that of someone else’s
Delineating the world
of abstracts into absolutes
Befouling the beauty of randomness
by the confines of routine

So why
Yes - Why
I dare to ask
On this day ‘ O Teacher’,
you stand so tall
All in all you’re just
Another brick in the wall.