ALL: an Elegy for Charleston in Thirty One Haiku

 

J: these blood soaked floorboards

murmur  gospels we have fought hard

to discredit

 

N: Psalms smeared with blood stained hallelujahs, Hymns sound a little darker now.

 

J: here cleanliness is next to godliness

 

ALL: But Our black is still dirty.

 

N: We're taught hosting strangers is  showing hospitality to angels

 

J: an angel of death cloaked in sinless white skin entered and showed us hell

 

N: blood seeping through soil to meet the devil dylan said we were spawned from

 

J: Hell hath no fury like a white man desperate.  A white man hungry.

 

N: Meanwhile, that sinister  smug banner sneered down at us, fluttering pride

 

J: 9 people massacred but they're more worried their flag will disappear

 

N: Bree Newsome refused to wait but the law of the land still stands sturdy.

 

J: I guess this means war. But two hundred years have taught us not to fight back.

N: stained skin clinging to stained glass, vindictive black folk make easy targets

 

ALL: we are expected to forgive, but we only have two cheeks to turn

 

N: we pluck bullets out of bodies and forget the skin of the fallen

 

J: cracked windows matter more than cracked spines. Broken laws trump broken systems

 

N: And they say go to church. Strap on your bible belt. Earn the right to live.

 

J: Respectability is a privilege. Not a birthright. Own it.

 

N: 9 black people killed. protect and serve. bullet proof vest and burger king.

 

J: We can no longer hang on false truths we are at the end of the rope.

 

N: Dylan planned this attack longer than most of us will think about it

 

J: Media misleads motives.  Racism is not a mental illness.

 

N: "Attack on religion" is a better headline.  Plants fear in white hearts.

 

J: gun control is not the issue unless lynchings require rope control

 

N: Black culture seems to matter more than black lives. Both tucked under church pews

 

J: We are told to worship no man but yet here we kneel, hands raised. don’t shoot.

 

N: Close your eyes. Bow your head. Pay no mind to charred chapels and bleeding bodies.

 

N - Pray,

J - March,

N - Protest,

J - Repeat.

N - Pray,

J - March,

N - Protest

J - Repeat.

 

All - Same plan. Same outcome.

 

N: We were black first, long before we learned how to pray, execution style

 

J: you see the holes we are left with,  might mistake us for Jesus himself.

 

N: Forgive them father. Come hell or high water

 

All: They know not what they do

All: On Sunday we kneel at the altar as the walls burn down around us.