America has never been great.
Built on the backs of stolen people on stolen land.
We’re a melting ***, they say, a conglomeration of cultures and ethnicities,
But words mean nothing, when time and time again our neighborhoods are filled with injustice,
Our streets only know carnage.
Our protectors unleash violence upon civilians and our leaders continue to justify acts of brutality.

America is on fire
And the smoke clears and dawn breaks,
We will continue to fight for a new beginning.

In the Charleston marketplace, a boutique auctions off
detailed limited edition replicas of black history: a slave
who hugs his chains upright over his porcelain hands,
is sold for $1200.00 to a man with a black Amex card,
a horde listening to the Emancipation Proclamation
goes for the same amount, Malcolm X gets $1000.00,
MLK just a little less, the OJ bobble heads sell for $60.00  
in the store’s gift shop while the white Bronco in
slow pursuit complete with flashing police lights
and breathless live commentary garners $2400.00,
Rosa Parks languishes at the rear eventually getting $300.00,
Eric Garner, Treyvon Martin, Rodney King are
part of lot sold for $500.00 clearance and a free
Black Lives Matter T-shirt, George Floyd gasping out
“I can’t breathe,” enshrined in a porcelain halo nabs
the same price, while the last figurine, of his murderer
being embraced by a very happy Donald Trump is
purchased by a man in a MAGA hat for $10,000.00.

she cries in shattered glass,
in the open spaces where the dye was cast.
a world so white, so drenched in paint,
the ones now deaf once were saints.
and when the black came out to say
a counterfeit bill a jog a day-
light crime so bold so crazy
it made the streets hazy with smoke.
equality sounds a lot like a hoax
the war brushed away with nothing but Twitter
tear gas and bullets are so much fitter, bitter
is the taste of deafness upon a lost society.
abandoned, forgotten, stomped on and out
no wonder some have forgotten their law abiding piety.
white paint becomes pink
when mixed with blood.
pink is a color for little girls,
and fits perfectly with the sound of our world.

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.

This is a verse for George
This is a poem for Philando
This is a memory of Oscar
Continuing the fight for Malcolm
Venerating the wisdom of Martin
This is a call to action
Even if just a fraction
Causes this cause to gain traction
For people tired of the inaction
The people have spoken
And decades have passed
Nothing has changed
Protesters still getting gassed
With years behind them
Trying to stay quiet
One ******
Two murders
A thousand
It's no surprise
That this protest is now a riot
Flames flitting in and out of frame
Guns glinting
as bootlickers offer more of the same
Tin badges holding themselves
As above the rest of us
I scream in disgust
What gives you the right
To ****** my neighbors?
What gives you the right
To brutalize my friends?
These fires ignite a memory
And makes me sing
Noting the similarity
To Martin,
and also Rodney king
I'll stop now
My angry rambling
I'll leave you with a quote
Most would think
It was said by Malcolm
But it was said by Dr. King
It's not absurd
He said it
"A riot is the language of the unheard"
That is the wisdom of Martin
That's why we continue to fight for Malcolm
That's why I remember Oscar
I wrote this poem for Philando
I wrote this verse for George

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.

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

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

Joy in the Morning
by Michael R. Burch

for my grandparents George Edwin Hurt and Christine Ena Hurt

There will be joy in the morning
now this long twilight is over
and their separation has ended.
For fourteen years, he had not seen her
whom he first befriended,
then courted and married.
Let there be joy, and no mourning,
for now in his arms she is carried
over a threshold vastly sweeter.
He never lost her; she only tarried
until he was able to meet her.

Keywords/Tags: George Edwin Hurt Christine Ena Spouse reunited heaven joy together forever