Police Brutality
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The ghost of the victim told me to kill the men who had killed her.
I was too afraid.
"Please come back, he's tied me up." That's what she told me.
But if I kill these men, then I go to prison.
I know what happened to her...I know what happened to them...You won't get away with this,I know the truth.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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(June 2022)
The locked door broken open
A knife in the bathroom
Blood on bedsheets and towels
Ethnicity is not a crime.
Gathering together for justice isn’t either.
What they did was wrong, it was sickening, it was cold blooded murder.
He wakes up.
And starts to get ready for his day.
He brushes his teeth
Because is mama always said she wouldn’t let any son of hers go out with booty breath.
You will never know.
Luckily you will never feel that shaking terror running through your veins like ice.
You will never stare before you down the barrel of a gun
We are many shades lighter
But carry the most darkness
Complicit in the genocide
Of those who look different
As a Black Man
I was told that I am created equal
After my first diploma,
College was the obvious sequel
However, I sit here questioning where I head
Struggling to come up with a valid reason
Who We Are
Imagine this
Your ancestors living life free,
No worries in the world,
Until foreigner’s land in your city,
To my future son,
Bringing you here is a challenge you see, not physically or financially but mentally.
This should not be a part of my worries but you know it’s racism and police brutality.
In the midst of all darkness,
you persist to be better,
you persist to overcome adversity.
Your conviction in hope allows you to believe
in the inevitablity of infinity.
After everything you have achieved,
To my dear black boy,
I felt your body tense the moment the wailing of the siren rang in our ears
Red is dripping
Hands once up are now down
Black
Coming in like a flood
No ark is gon save me now.
sirens of red and blue
when all I wanna hear is silence
Where does it end?Where does the bloodshed of my brothers and sisters end?Freedom is non-existent in a world where our skin is not acceptedWe have no real rights because our race is rejected
Why must we
Observe these bleeding bodies
On the floorboards of restless ancestors
Whose lives were tainted by the scoreboard of oppression?
And we sit behind
A phone and find
"One nation,
Under God,
Indivisible,
With liberty,
And justice for all."
It's interesting how people believe that those words are not false;
Silence,
The night sky is clear at this moment.
Flash.
DON’T MOVE YOU TWO!
They are frozen, we are frozen.
A sigh, a groan,
"Mom I don't wanna go!"
Reluctance in my every step,Mumbling and grumbling under my breath,
I shed my PJs and dress the boys,
"Come on, lets go!" I snap
I don't want to go.
I’m here on the scene
With a crying black mother
If you look to your left
There’s a hoodie on the ground painted with blood
Painted with bullet holes and red stains
To survive another day is a lifestyle;
We don't live anymore, not when we have to keep our eyes open
Because of the giant targets on our backs that have become a birthmark.
Fight or flight sensitive at night;
In the Streets of America tonight
Many hands of young students scrape the sky
The colors of blue and red abrace their face
As they endlessly march unguarded
We haven’t much to call our own.
Not our eyes or our hair,
or our X chromosome.
Not our face or our fare,
or the places we roam.
Fake men afraid to have real conversations
Adverse persuasion
Scared of world view revelations
So the same hatin' going down in police stations
Another black man is killed
Another trans kid commits suicide
Another woman is sexually harassed
Aren't we just statistics
In the sadistic game of life?
Dear Ferguson,
You should’ve never happened.
To others, you came as a surprise.
To some, you were a consequence.
But to those that dwelled in the cracks of
City sidewalks –
Within the brick and mortar
So my identity is apparently the target on the balck dots for your gunsot.
Wait let me rephrase myself, GUNSHOTS!
And i say that in humility wit the hunger for justice that seems scarce in the streets of a coloured man's world.
Our poor, poor Queen.
Folks say she’ll swallow you in one big gulp,
But she cannot eat if she’s beaten to a pulp.
Her nipples are swollen from her own ravenous descent,
And corporate banks fuck her without consent.
Tragedy.
Police pulling guns on the daily, to the heads of coloured men, and to the hearts of them, Bang Bang and they're gone just as fast as they came.
Brown skin, white palms, my hair is dark and always nappy
I struggle to thrive in a world designed to keep me unhappy
I go to school the teachers think that I'm breaking rules
When I tell my mom that I fear for the lives of the people who I hold dear to me , she asks why
Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early darkness,
surrounding me in this prison, killing me,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming
is our incredibly racist past,
I bet you’ll pull your gunwhen I speak upbut you won’t shootsimply because I look like you.
"The Land of the Free"
Was written by White men
As they fearlessly planted their feet on the black and brown bodies they burnt and bled to get there
And did not stop to smell the irony
It funny how the CPD claims that every new hiring is a step closer to securityBut they’re not even securing us.Betty can look outside her suburban windows and see white snow on asphalt
Racism does not exist,
says the well-off white man living on the hill
Racism does not exist,
Says the woman who had never been asked to drop her bag in the store
Making History Out Of What?
What will history make of us?
I think as I read of my peers
Bringing toy guns to school
And decorating the halls in blood
Suzie and Manny drive down the road.
Suzie is light and Manny is dark.
But they don’t mind as their hands hold.
They make their way to the skate park
As they hear a siren bold.
Manny pulls over to remark
Every day I see not the land of the free
Not here where children on the streets unkind beg for scraps
Our government, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, giving the illusion of help
I Am American
I am American, home of the brave and free,
I am American, where dawns early light glints of the handgun cellphone, something in his pocket can't tell what it was BANG BANG BANG
I can’t sleep on the fourth of July.
Not when fireworks
sound like cracked whips
and sparklers glisten
like blood under a streetlamp.
Being born on US soil means your life has more value
Hate special snowflakes, unless it’s Matthew
One life is worth more than 80,000 so long as it’s Christian
Alls my life I has to fight...
Alls my life I...
been a modern slave with my chains decorated red, white, and blue.
“An invisible black man”,
through and through.
Yet, my skin offends many;
Oh, say, can you see,
blinded by the tear gas
By the dawn's early light,
shining through our body bags as we lay on the street, hitting our 3 hour mark
What so proudly we hailed
Where I can walk down the street and get shot for being me
Where people shout at the top of their lungs for me to leave their country
Even though the border crossed me
A cloud of smoke suffocating this generation
Drugs and Alchol seems to be the only way out of this rotation
Flirting with depression and anxiety
before we even flirted with compound words in our diary
What were you doing the night of August 28, 1955?
How were you feeling on May 15, 1970?
Where were you on March 3, 1991?
What about on April 29, 1992?
October 9, 2005?
Our country is dividing down the middle-
So divided, it's crumbling.
One side begs for justice, and their rights.
They beg for it to stop-
A police woman gets her face smashed,
Into a concrete curb
By a drug intoxicated man
She is terrified to shoot
Police brutality has made her the victim
She risks her life to not be criticized
Police brutality is a controversial issue that has been growing in significance in the United States.
What is the life of another boy worth?
Should I question the importance of why,
We suffer more loss on this planet called Earth?
A brown skinned boy with ambitions to fly.
Each Night,
I rub, I scrape
and I fight.
Each night I try
to wash the pigment
I cry
as my skin begins to redden
I can't take it off.
All of a sudden
I stop.
I said, "How long will it take?"
I mean, we've seen the same mistakes
Ain't it crazy after all this
We're still waiting for change
And the faces are the same
The pain, it still remains
I never understood how a city could be divided in two.
Nairobi City. The city of two. The rich and the poor too.
This is where you succeed if you know who to talk to,
I sit, my phone is in my hand and my heart beating fast
Captions says, Another Black Man Killed by Police
A video is linked. The video starts.
Dear Police,Why don't you seeThat I'm not just a NiggaI'm an actual human being?Dear cop,Am I about to get stopped? I've got places to go. There's other people to knock.Dear 5-0,
Does skin lie?
Blue skin
Blue means loyal
A hero to the average
American
Worn with pride to show that
They are a presence meant
For peace and equality
Does their skin tell the truth?
Black.
That's what they see first.
Black.
That's what they hear first.
Black.
That's what they touch first.
Black.
That's what they remember first.
I look up and I see the red and blue flashes.
We see in a certain way
What we think we know
We don't
We see you struggle
We see you die
We do nothing
We think we understand
We feel sorry
We see again and again
We ignore
If you are intimidated by someone else's skin color
STEP DOWN
If you believe that your life is somehow more valuable than those that don’t look like you
Maybe I'm wrongBut I don't think police is lawful anymoreIt doesn't make any since how much lives are being claimedAnd that's a shame, it seems like the more we publicize,
I walk to my home, the summer air is thick; surrounded by hallowed street lights and homes of made of brick
The streets I walk, normally awake with life, are empty and dull; not a cackle of laughter in my line of sight
"I wanna be a police officer when I grow up!" A little boy of just a few year said to me.He must not see the news.
There's a people cryin out to the Lord today
Cause too many injustices done come our way
A people oppressed you think would have nothing to say
But we can't be fearful with our heads hung in shame
Strip me of my pride, all the lies been synthesize, been over looked,
i been tooked, repromised of my pride.
Done in the dark comes to light and a thousand black women march in pain,
hoping not to go in vein,
they say that adaptation in its prime is simply
assimilation
or admiration .
but I see things as they are and not for how they will be
and what this is,
what they are-- is damnation.
how am I supposed to feel, when we live in a world where it's a crime to feel?
when I was a little girl I was happy, I was bold,
I held freedom, despite what they spoke.
The fight is strong
The will is weak
We want the same
We want a leader to rise up
We want the war to stop
We see no where to hide
The fight will not stop
We are killed
We are stereotyped
Somewhere beyond the rainbow
Beyond where streets are paved in gold
Beyond where freedom’s gospel is quoted in stone
I am Mike Brown. I am Tamir Rice. I am Eric Garner.
I am the fallen of my culture, my color, my characteristics.
I am the family of these victims, I am the friends.
Too much is going on.
Its a world full of wrongs.
Can never get it right.
Lift our voice,they take our life.
Speak some sense , they flip the switch.
Police no different from the men in the sheets.
Your existence is never trivialYour sins are always forgivableYour crimes are all permissibleNo matter how despicableYou’ll never be held accountable
A father killed in the streets from a bullet fired from a gun in the hand of a man that was hired to protect and serve.
we are under the comfort
that blooming flowers are bright
that they shine like stars in a glistening night--
that they are good and small, like a beacon of light--
but we can't tell what's a flower
Are we awesome?
Nah, maybe were just ordindary
Many of my people locked away in solitary
Causing this huge diversionary
How can they call themselves honorary?
Was it my face
or
the color of my skin
was it my size
or
was it my stride
that made you apprehend
me with the excuse
that I was a threat
When nobody checked
I protect you
I serve you
I am looked up to
I come into your schools for career day
Your kids clap
They awe my presence & the powers I possess
I am depicted as your "best friend"
I'm afraid to raise sons in this world.Black men who will be profiled and targeted from my womb,
This video was created to transmit disgust with incidents of law enforcement officials relying too heavily on violent measures of interventi
In the constant praise for our country
We forget the misery and suffering
That persists within so insidiously.
We have worked tragedy unto others
The real calamity is how we let it be
I feel it in your voice
I sense it in your stare
I taste it in your tears,
a battle fought for countless years
All I ask is to be respected, I will not be neglected, you're surprise of an uprise of people acting reckless, years of peace and protest why we still feel helpless, the leaders who promoted peace, became decease, now what does that sa
Who decided that our skin was tainted
Anything that isn't light and innocent
Light and free
Is an enemy to purity
The skin is what decides who we are
Even when you try to take on another skin
When I watched the first scraps of news litter my twitter feed on the ninth of August 2014I asked myself only one question:Again?
I'm running for my life.
I hear the whirring of the alarms,
the screams of the people.
I look for a way to run,
though all i see are mobs of
pigs, enclosing on me.
Then comes the tear gas.
We are justice.
We are peace.
We speak for the dead that can not speak
Gunned down without reason
Paid administrative leave
There is no justice
We are not free
Hunters will set up blinds
In woods
So the prey
Being hunted
Will get use to what seems foreign.
I wonder
If they know their getting use to
Their killer
We are accustomed
I see em
Puffin on the marijuana
Turning over the empty bottles
of vodka
trying to conquer
the pain
And the many tears brought
as days turn to months
and months turn to years
I see em
Puffin on the marihuana
Turning over the empty bottles
of vodka
trying to conquer
the pain
And the many tears brought
as days turn to months
and months turn to years
once upon a time in the bronx, there was a little boy name sam
the reason he know his name is because he refers himself as sam i am
as a little boy, he dreamed of aspiring to be a cop
On the block I saw a J-Rock with his hand on his glock looking like he wanted to pop so I, went to tell him stop. See, he just go out the pen and another strike he’ll get life in the pen and I’m his only friend, knew him since we was 10.
