Eight Minutes in May

I’m just a yokel,
nothin’ in my noggin ‘cept dust
while old fires burn,
when souls cry out
to finally be heard,
when hearts have all exploded
over the same pavement
where their necks were pressed
and lives snuffed out.
The police are suiting up for combat,
firing up the tanks,
readying for war,
and I’m still standing in place,
slack-jawed,
shocked,
tears filling my face.
I feel my neck pressed
on the pavement,
imagination squeezing out my life,
filling my pores with a rage
I didn’t know was possible.
Only imagination,
no knee holding me down.
Only imagination,
no onlookers witnessing my death.
They did this
You did this.
We did this.
I did this.
My legs are frozen;
the march goes forward,
tear gas rushing through me.
People are rising,
beautiful and triumphant.
People are lifting their voices,
earnest and finally
at the end of their rope.
I’m projecting through space,
climbing my family tree,
finding ancestors
and preparing the tree
where they deserve to dangle,
where their necks should feel
that rough jute rope
as my ghost hands grip,
slip the noose and let their
useless lives slip away,
unnoticed and unremarkable.
I’m no price to pay at all
if they’d never existed,
and beauty was left to flower
in traditions and families
who never deserved abuse.
The police are marching on our streets,
storming our homes,
taking us out before we get a good look,
before we see their monsters.
Fires are burning.
People are rising,
bodies engulfed,
effigies of collective esophagi.
No air gets through.
The nurses fight through rubber bullets,
clad in medical-grade garbage,
supplies looted and spilled.
The nurses fight,
shove tubes down our throats.
Now none of us can breathe.
Everything is burning.
Our lives are burning.
Our lives mean nothing.
The floodgates must be torn down;
let the flood of melanin
wash over everything,
drown us, the children of terrorist.
They did this
You did this.
We did this.
I did this.
I’m starting to close my mouth,
my esophagus is catching fire.
I’ll either breath the fire of my indignation
or find myself intubated,
a machine replacing my lungs.
It’s only June,
and already the very air is burning
my skin. It’s only been two weeks,
but it feels like 400 years.
The shock has faded,
rage shoots out
of my mouth in great bursts,
flame and smoke.
The police are locking arms,
demanding our submission,
demanding our allegiance,
demanding our loyalty,
blindness.
Let the pavement
‘ever be pressed to our necks
so we can
never forget.

Written 7 June 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

To be published in Perspective To Pen: An Anthology. Look for it in September.Continue Reading