Compassion informs my outrage,

Skinny black kid,
super sensitive
playing the violin
for kittens,
pacifist vegetarian
tried to tell policemen
“I am not violent.
I’m an introvert.
I am different,”
as they choked him
then had paramedics
dose him
with ketamine.

Buds of pain
do not bloom
but burst, spray,
and sprain
my brain
that was self-trained
in the art of
kindness and reason.

It takes
less than five minutes
to break a mother’s heart,
to tare her world apart,
to shatter and claim
that they are not to blame
after unloading a full clip
on an autistic thirteen-year-old
who wasn’t mentally equipped
to do exactly what he was told.

Love and mercy
should rule the day
but cops make
violence great again.
Human suffering
is not magic
just unnecessarily tragic. cont.

Micheal Brown,
Eric Garner,
Tamir Rice,
George Floyd,
Freddy Gray,
Breonna Taylor,
Elijah Mcclain,
Linden Cameron,
Jacob Blake,
and so many other names.
There has to be a better way.

there used to be a shy, young man
living four doors down from mine.
he never seemed too hurt to me,
and he told me he was fine.

I shouldn't have believed him
but I didn't have a choice.
you can't listen to cries for help
if the crier has no voice.

he was from the south side
where bullets fly like stars,
painting the skies red every night
through windows, skin, and cars.

a girl lived on the north side
slightly to the west.
I had never met her,
but he said she was the best.

when he talked about this girl,
she was his rock, his moon, his sun.
she was all he'd ever dreamed of
and their romance had begun.

I saw him outside all the time
daydreaming down the block.
his story was a timebomb
and I wish I saw the clock.

I never saw this girl of his,
but she made him someone new.
he smiled, happy and in love
and I knew she loved him too.

he finally seemed eager
to learn, to live, to leave.
kids don't make it out of here
but I let him believe.

city kids are city kids.
they never travel far.
they will never see a garden,
just concrete, blood, and tar.

city kids don't breathe fresh air.
they smoke ****, cigs, cigars.
I wish that things were different
but this is how they are.

I wish that the boy four doors down
was able to be freed,
but just like all the other boys,
he had to stay and bleed.

that boy would sneak out late at night,
walking alone in silence.
he'd travel to the northwest side
with no fear of the violence.

every night, he'd stay awake.
his eyelids felt weighed down.
he didn't seem to notice.
I never saw him frown.

every day, he could be seen
doing what he always did.
with deals and deaths and drive-bys,
he didn't get to be a kid.

but none of that mattered
as soon as nighttime came.
he saw his girl when it got dark.
every night, it was the same.

until one night, the boy got stopped
and told to stay away.
the northwest side was not his side,
but he could not obey.

their romance turned to horror
and their love turned into fear.
I wish it didn't go this way,
but the end was clearly near.

city boys and city girls
never see what we call "fame."
they don't show up in newspapers,
and no one asks their names.

city boys die every day,
with bullets in their brains.
no one hears their cries for help.
no one feels their pain.

the young man living on my block
fell in love and saw no danger.
on the south side, he was sweet and shy.
away from home, he was a stranger.

he never made it out of here.
he didn't get to finish growing.
he went to see his perfect girl
but never got where he was going.

the next morning, his girl was told
how they found him on the ground.
she took a rope and went to bed
and that's where she was found.

******, pain, and gunshots
and a girl hung from her ceiling.
this city saw it all and more
and still, we aren't healing.

I think about him often now,
that boy from four doors down.
I wonder where he'd be today
if he had left this town.

two graves dug in the dirt too soon
are all that's left of them today.
you won't ever hear their stories
now that they've gone away.

a boy with hope still in his eyes
and dreams still in his mind
was stolen so abruptly
before it was his time.

a girl with love still in her heart
and faith still in her smile
was punished with a death sentence
but never had a trial.

he was a modern Romeo
and she was Juliet.
they fell in love and lost their lives
not even grown up yet.

a tragedy with pain and loss,
a true Shakespearean drama.
this is the kind of story
that leaves us all with trauma.

once, there was a boy and girl
who ended when they bled,
like characters inside a play
that they had never read.

they were taught how to survive,
who would hurt them, where to look.
they knew of pain and grief and death
but never learned to read a book.

A swerve and crumple

the too-low Miata meeting
the steel of a
semi's rear.

top speed impatience
becomes

a mangled massacre
of twisted plastic and metal.

Bone just powder in
a pillow of pink
red-streaked
pulverized flesh.

my jaw agape as I pass too slow-

existential dread is the hand
contorted upward
a few fingers missing
or lost in the mass-

A horn brings me back.
People too late
to care.

I contemplate stopping
but I'm late too-
and there's nothing to salvage
for me here.

I guess you could say
that I feel broken.

it's this feeling where
I'm in the room,
and you can see me,
but I'm not here.

it's kind of like
I left pieces of me
everywhere I went.

I dropped my
idea of safety
while I was running.

it landed on the corner
of Morris Park
and Fillmore street,
and was tainted by
my friend's blood
pouring out onto
the concrete.

I didn't want it back.

my innocence was
left shivering
on the pool table
in my first
boyfriend's basement.

I remember thinking
that this was the
right place to
leave it, and
then crying once
I realized it was gone.

my faith in humanity
was lost too.

it fell somewhere
between the cracks
in all of this violence,
and was swallowed
by the fog of dust
and debris.

I don't know
where the rest of me
disappeared to.

maybe I gave too much
of myself away
when I tried to help
everyone else,
and ended up
forgetting to
help myself.

or maybe
I left those pieces
with the people
I loved, in the
places where
we used to go.

maybe, if you looked,
you could still find me

in my laughter
echoing under
the streetlights

or hidden deep
in the shadows
where we used
to park our cars

or floating towards
the sky in a cloud
of marijuana smoke

or stuck to the lips
of someone I loved once.

but maybe,
there's a chance
that all of me is still here,
even though I feel
so broken.

maybe I'm not incomplete.

maybe I am still enough,
even with all of these
missing pieces.

and maybe, one day,
I will find myself again.

Little boy blasting,
out on the streets rapping,
while other children keep clapping.

It’s as beautiful site.

Living amidst destruction
but trying to construct
an art form from love
because adults
in power haven't stepped up.

Little girl marching,
rigidly standing against
environmental destruction
another young leader of the people.

It’s as beautiful site.

But this shouldn't have to be
the fight of their young lives.
Why are they out there
trying to save our lives
when we had so many
generations to stand up
and do what’s right?

One grown *** idiot
is barely living up
to the ideals he believes in,
leaves the struggle
to the children
who seem to have more
heart instead of him.

While he writes celebrating
their success and greatness,
he settles in to accept this mess
because he doesn't really believe
it will get any better than this.

the walls here are thin
because we can't afford
to build them any stronger.

we can't afford to spend money
to test smoke detectors,
or to build new fire escapes.

if this building
goes up in flames,
we have accepted that
we will all burn with it.

we can't afford to
spend money on
our children's safety.

but even if we could,
would it matter?

money can buy teddy bears
and pretty flower bouquets.

money can beautify
our roadside memorials,

but lit candles and
decorated street corners
can't bring back the
children who died there.

every night, I hear the sirens
of an ambulance speeding
through our streets.

sirens are the lullaby
that this city sings to our children,
and to our children's children.

if I didn't hear them
when I close my eyes,
I would be afraid.

because no sirens
does not mean that
there is no crime.

no sirens means only
that no one has come
to clean up the scene.

someone told me once,
that in suburbia,

in the neighborhoods
where the houses are
built with thick walls
and strong foundations,

and the neighbors fight
over who can buy
the fanciest car,

and those fights end
with snarky comments
instead of gunshots,

their children
fall asleep listening
to the sound of crickets
instead of sirens.

in those neighborhoods,
they do not raise their children
to be afraid of drugs
and death and violence.

they raise their children
to be afraid of our children.

our children are buried
six feet beneath the ground,

before their children
even learn the meaning
of the word "death."

The dawn red as blood
Violence all over the field
Fight for peace they say

i.
when my father's pride lands
on my shoulder, digging it's claws
into my collarbone; demanding
blood in return for his
acknowledgement
of my
existence;
I learn to receive his broken
version of what love is
without protest.

ii.
when my mother's judgment
runs it's fingertips down the
curvature of my spine, searching
for weaknesses in my
posture, pose,
and figure;
my weight, skin
and fissures;
I learn to endure her
backhanded version of love  
without complaint.


iii.
when my younger brother's anger
comes over for dinner, makes itself
a guest in my first apartment;
and cusses out my duty
as an older sister to
even give a **** about him
in the first place?
Tells me I've failed
at loving him properly?
I learn to cry without
really crying
at all.

iv.
you think you've taught yourself how to be ice;
only to realized you're just shattered water.

“you ain’t a man until you’re given a gun.”
he said. but I knew better.
giving a boy a gun
doesn’t make him a man.
it makes him a boy with a gun.

my hands were made for pens, not glocks.
I told him his were too.
he laughed and said,
“nah, my hands are made the same
as every other boy on this block.
you cut off my finger, it’s still gon’ bleed.”

I tried to argue but he said,
“these hands steal ****.
money, jewelry, clothes.
hell, these hands steal lives!”

and he was right about that.
he had the same dirt on his hands
that any other boy around here had.

still, I think his hands
were made for pens, not glocks.
maybe he would’ve picked up a pencil
if his hands hadn’t gotten
so used to holding a gun.

he was nineteen.
he was young and angry
and ready to fight,
and he didn’t know exactly why,
but he knew he had to be.

the streets here are where people
disappear when it gets dark,
and where no one asks questions
when the sun comes up.

there are no flowers
growing next to the sidewalk.
here, there are bags of crack
and gold chains and Cuban cigars.
there are plants here, but no flowers.

I was taught that here,
they don’t follow laws,
but they need to follow rules.

most rules here are unwritten.
instead, they are ingrained
into the street’s children,
a mantra that you could die
for not remembering.

he said, “if I die,
it’s gon’ be sprawled out on concrete.
no way I’m going down
without a fight.”

here, they are still fighting wars
that ended years ago everywhere else.

here, they grow up without
mothers and fathers.
they learn to feed themselves
as soon as they no longer
need a baby bottle.

here, it is strange
to not join in on the violence.
it is strange to not participate
in drive-by shootings.
it is strange to not want revenge.

here, strange is dangerous.
things are the way that they are
and this is the way they have always been.

here, he was any other
nineteen-year-old boy.
here, they would say he died naturally.
he stepped a little too far into view
and a bullet struck him in the right spot.
or the wrong spot,
depending on how you see it.
quick and almost painless for him,
but that hurt moved on to everyone else.

here, there are no rights and no wrongs.
things are not good or bad.
things simply are.

his mama sobbed when
she heard what happened.
she cried for him, but also
for every other boy on the block.

she cried for the boy
who ended her son’s life,
because she knew
he wasn’t any different
than any other boy here.

she cried for all the mothers
who lost their sons,
and for all the children
born into this life.

here, they don’t have to die
for you to lose them.
this life takes them from you,
dead or alive.

he was a friend,
and a brother, and a son.
he could’ve been
a writer, or an athlete,
or a ******* astronaut
for all I know.

but in the end,
he was only a boy with a gun.
here, they call that a man.