I am the shadow of trayvon martin
Lying on the ground just as he did
I'm black just as he was
I wasn't planning to die that day either
I wasn't threatning nobody either
that day
The gunshots echoed
just as loud
when I was shot down as Mike Brown
yet his name echoes through the streets years later still
mine followed me to the grave
They don't care about me it seems
If I cried "what about me"
Who would ever see?
because my hashtag has even been drowned so deep in the depths of R.I.P's that I can't barely breathe anymore
When we think black brutality
Why do the names of trayvon
Mike
Tamir
Sandra
Rush to our heads just as fast as blood once rushed to theirs?
Does my black life, too, matter?
I can't blame you
That there have been so many deaths due to oppression and police brutality that they all seem to sound the same
No matter how loud we scream Black lives matter
We will never be seen as the living
But the potentially dead
We cry for justice to a system that's no longer built to accept us
A president that tries to forget us
A black voice will always be too loud to a world who never intended on listening
Who am I?
Besides a hashtag and a t-shirt with my face on it?
A black lives matter sign and a melanin fist?
A statistic?
I am black excellence
Regardless of how much sin you may see in my kin

They used to ****** people that look like I do
They do ****** people that look like I do
They've taken away my freedom and put my mind in a cage
No use to fight the bloodshot eyes
Stained from the tears I cry
Our cries for justice and equality they are trying to hide behind bars
because they know that nobody dares to read between the lines of white lies
They are trying to silence us
Keeping an entire race from the ability to arise

When blackbirds die, why can't we ever hear their screams?
Maybe that's why they never hear our screams,
For black lives to actually matter

Injustice has grabbed us by the hand with a grip that we can barely withstand
We cannot break free from what our skin defines us as
They say be afraid,
I'm just another face in the crowd of a picture of silenced serenity
Because dark skin is really just a picture of crowded statistics and percentages
We stay in the shade because that's the only place we seem to fit in
Maybe that's why we seem to be walking in the dark like zombies
Killed by the sweetness of black suicide , genocide
I'm tired of trying to put my sorrows aside

Our children love to play in the rain
Dark hearts
Dark souls
Dark minds
Seem to come along with having dark skin
The rain finally gives it a companion
Our little boys can finally find a release
Cry the tears they always held back
Because they were taught that real men don’t cry
But the rain
Protects him from criticism
He asks
“If I cry alone,
Will heaven still accept me?”

Let us pray
‘Our father who hide in shadows
Humble be thy name
Thy love will never come
Thy affection is solely done

No use to fight the bloodshot eyes
Stained from the tears I cry
And Your love that is seeming to die

I sit

Light?
I need none,  just wanna feel a buzz


Yet nobody kills the high of your lust better than you
That pedestal I put you on has sky scraped my heart raw
Yet the pain keeps me wanting fix
Fistfuls of tears and hate we ****** at each other
Burning our trust
Til the smoke exhausts us
Time stops and forgiveness is brought
I love you’s and fantasies are from silent thoughts to passionate exchanges
We seal our soon to be broken promises with a kiss
A pattern so sweet my tongue can’t seem to keep itself off of you

The rain could never drown me, for I stand beneath you
My umbrella
Beholding patches
Exposing the brisk to my lips
Cheeks would be stained red if I was a shade of pale
Embarrassed,
To be seen trapped within this thing of sorts which you call love

I could tell you my truth until my heart is raw
Remove the bandages from my secrets until you love all my scars
Stare into your eyes so deeply until you  believe that we are
Just as in common as the moon and a star
But until you decide to look and listen, one of us plays the fool

Your friends spoon-feed you lies until you are full
So every time I tell you I love you, you give me this look of disgust and throw up all the ******* they fed you
You start to shed your shame on me, tell me to look at the mess I've made
And while you tear me apart, I pick up the pieces and offer it as all of my heart

I want to know you more than you know yourself
For every ego shines through impurities
If you're broke, you flaunt cash
If you're ugly in the face, you flaunt your body
If your sad, you smile and say it's okay
If you're a punk, you flaunt weapons
For your ego says a lot about you
Maybe I already know you more than you know yourself
Without even knowing

Some of us live in love for the moment
and like frank ocean some of us think so far ahead that our intentions turn into misconceptions,
Flowers could never define his love because he finds no drive to meet that desire of mine
His garden is the bush in his pants and he encourages me to go down and smell the roses..
But I'm still not impressed
yet I'm still undressed,
He's confused like why can't you just take what you can get
And every simple question I ask gets put into this label of complaining
..I've never been seen as a crybaby til' my heart met you
People change, although, I think this is no phase
Because sunshine days have turned to rain
You give me pain as a gift and my expectations from you have been tainted so badly that as long as you cover it up with a kiss and a smile my heart will flutter and I won't be able to hold my tongue from saying that I love you
I can't say that I'm lost because I know exactly where I am
I was raised knowing that all these thugs were supposed to be heart breakers so when I came across the idea of you.. You told me you could give me something different, and I believed you
I had never been loved so selfishly and I fell in love with that..

why couldn't you ever see?
beyond the glam he gleamed
were gleaming screams
Of a child fearing her dreams

Things were always more severe than they seemed
The scars ran further than skin deep
Tears streamed lower than steep
Nobody helped me escape feeling beat

A fathers mouth should be for wisdom and love
Despite what tries to hold his tongue

There is nothing left to write
Nothing left to say
Nothing left to hear that we haven't already heard
Every word propagandized

We know
As well as they know
that black boys deserve to grow up too
that a black girls life is precious too
with natural hair and melanin glow
beauty able to stop a show..
that the sound of gunshots and police sirens aren't so cool anymore
that we're not proud to wear red, white, and blue anymore
because the only times they ever give us credit for displaying the colors of patriotism is when they show another one of us dead or in handcuffs with police lights painted on our skin
They insult our pride and attack our good virtue..
since when has dark skin resembled a shot target?
I'm a human being, not the brute you define me as
I'm tired of being caged behind crime scene tape and metal bars..

that police aren't our friends anymore
that money is not just nothing but a thang 'round here
Because they put us in prisons to feel a little richer
A black life is priceless but nobody knows because we're still being sold to put on a show
That we're unheard
Nobody seems to care about us anymore
Tell us again that we ain't ever gonna fly
As our wings dangle from your fingers
That we're living in a world that serves the opposite
of justice and liberty for all

I looked up at the stars twinkling in the midnight sky
Smiled
Looked at him
"they remind me of my eyes the first time I saw you!"
I said with the sweetest smile on my face
He said nothing..
I asked him "wassup".. then
Noticed his eyes shivering
His cold heart was reminding him
Of each person he ever put a little piece of his heart in
Then took it with them to their death bed
His mind never seemed to rest easy when we stargazed
He said "baby
You over here ooh-ing and awe-ing over lights in the sky
While we surrounded by falling stars"
I could hear the unhealed scars in his heart
When he spoke
You could see the burn and twinkle in his eyes like fireflies
If only I could trap it in a jar the same way
Ease his pain
Kisses and I love you's were never enough
He believed he had to be tough
To run from his rough past
He came a long way
but ran the wrong way
shutting doors on every person who came his way
so he could have more room for harms-way
Because he knew the feeling of being shut out too
Shut out of heaven or hell's doors
Or in his words "wherever real ****** go when they die"
Everything he ever loved walked in and never came back
And as many times as he knocked
Those doors never opened for him
Those shores never swept him
Yet his mind was always lost
At "see what I mean, this life wasn't made for us"
..I wish he didn't believe it
His smile so precious
His mind so ambitious
His love so priceless
I wrote this poem to tell him that
Dirt in his mouth will never taste anything like the dinners I cook for him
and even on his good days, there will always be darkness
Calling for him

The grass was always greener on the other side
Seemingly
And as the seams started splitting,
Dreams
started
.. drifting ..


Yet I hope you've lifted
To see the hopes that you'd never find on the ground
The bright lights that always wanted to surround
The smiles as people cherish the sound
Of your emotions handthreaded into melodic rhymes
Never would you let your story go unheard
Ambitious
Never would you be seen with flaws in your walk
Beauty
You were always the things you never thought you were good enough to be
With an intellect as deep
as the sea
The waters may not be as shallow as you think

We know only to tolerate our pain
Hide and keep them like secrets
Yet the difference is even if words never speak it
Your truth will unveil
Whispered stories will tell

No matter how high you may get
Your faults will still grasp you on a leash
“Float like a butterfly
Sting like a bee”
There is no quote as sweet thee

On a journey to awaken your third eye
But your desires have caught fire
Smoke clouds rise too high
Three eyes and you still blind

To the happiness they hide from you for their own false satisfaction
While bullets brisk through bricks and windows fenced
The sun shines behind their white picket fences
We scream and feign
they watch and laugh like t.v.
How senseless to ask justice from the hands of the man who feeds you poison
Expecting a response not only centered around himself