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It must be in the fucking water being force-fed to the police

the prosecutor

and the politicians who care nothing for Black bodies falling

like leaves in late August

in Ferguson

in Cleveland

in Staten Island

only minutes away from where my own child sits

watching the muppets take over Manhattan

I am aching complicit

indulgently/nursing an October heartbreak 

while the world crumbles

insensible/inexplicable

in November

it is now December

and the world has lost it's fucking mind

Christmas trees being erected like 

Dicks

amidst the groundswell of Bill Cosby accusers 

coming out of the closet of secrecy

synchronizing with stories about Frat boys growing up rapists

all this as the national justice system wraps up cases 

in pretty-colored presentations to Grand Juries

who collectively refuse to indict

murderers captured on video

but freed by unpopular opinions 

that trump the overwhelming evidence 

available to anyone with a cellular phone

I am holding my own sorrow

for my only child born Black 

in a country in which her brown body does not matter

to anyone with any power

I am watching these videos

over and over again

the helpless bile rising angry in my chest

I am not feeling forgiving

it is time for these oppressors to turn THEIR fucking cheek to the public victims

all these accounts of these killings reek of racism

these events amount to a war against the poor

this is not a fucking video game

these men who are killed are not dominoes

these dead boys belonged to people who now mourn them

without closure

without a day in court/we are moving backward through history

foolish as it might have been

we the people had swallowed the fallacy 

that trumpeted the end of a time 

when Black mothers who lost children to white arrogance

had no recourse/that shameful time

that supposedly ended 

when Emmett Till 

when Herbert Lee

when Medgar Evers

when Harriette Moore

when Malcolm X-

back then/there was no hypocrisy about 

the system being stacked against anyone

with a smidgen of melanin staining the history of thier skin

fifty years later we must continue to raise our resources to protest the blatant lies 

littering Black people's experiences with the law

we are not protected by it

this is not what we voted for when we voted our first Black President

this is not what our freedom fighters hoped for

when they marched against segregation in Selma

in Chicago

this is not the dream Dr. Martin Luther King spoke about in Washington DC

almost a decade and a half into the 21st century

race relations in America is still a fucking cauldron bubbling angry

under the ugly swirl of Black despair and lack of white accountability 

parading as a penal system 

in which forty percent of those incarcerated 

come from a group which only consists of 12 percent 

of the entire fucking population

with numbers like that

what good does it do me

to comply with those in uniform?

I am shot at twelve years old for waving the toy gun

you sell to me every Christmas

wrestled to the ground

for breaking up a fight/because you suspect me of selling loose cigarettes

put in an illegal chokehold/because I dared to ask why

the whole incident filmed for my family to watch my death

played out on prime time TV/the public anger assuaged 

by the assumption

that justice has to eventual come

my death must be something more 

than a footnote in media frenzy of our time

I am owed something 

for having been violated by a system sworn to protect me

my name is Trayvon Martin

my name is Tamir Rice

my daughter is Michael Brown

your mother is Sean Bell

your father is Yvette Smith

Eleanor Bumpurs could have been any one of us 

I am Amadou Diallo

and Eric Garner is all of us

this phenomenon is an invisible epidemic

where the victims are forever silenced by state sanctioned executions

we have to find the courage speak for them

we must find the voice of resistance for ourselves 

for our children

our children's children 

is time to raise more than our eyebrows in protest

it is time to put our bodies where our hopes lie

this is not a moment to invoke

the sweet by and by

now is a moment for action

if there is any humanity left in you

get up

stand up

join a fucking protest

pick up a fucking pen

write

scream

wail 

march

meet

gather

plan

strategize 

its time to find a way to make them listen

its time to make the powers that be hear

they need to see we are no longer complicit

it's time to raise the roof on these motherfuckers

so they know 

we are never going away

AGAIN. AGAIN? NO, NO! NOT AGAIN!