how many more times do we say their names?
how many more times do we make signs and march?
how many more times do we hashtag Black lives matter?
how many more times do we just send thoughts and prayers?
how many more times will we hear the murderers say they were in fear for their life when the video clearly shows otherwise?
how many more times will cops lie and concoct a narrative to defend their actions then get put on paid administrative leave?
how many more times will the media portray the victims as being responsible for their own death?
how many more times will the jury find Blackness so threatening that they justify the aggression of violent murderers, and the verdict comes back not guilty?
how many more times will we go back to living our lives until the next person of color is murdered because their skin is weaponized, and we post another rip?
how many more times?
​
because i’m tired...

When you’re shot down in cold blood in the streets
When you’re choked out for selling loosies pleading “I can’t breathe”
When you’re still breathing lying helpless on the ground under white sheets
When GoFundMe’s are set up for funeral costs and killer’s lawyer fees
When the system’s been broken, ain’t no justice, no peace
When another hashtag and video footage makes you madder and sadder
When paid administrative leave leaves pigs pockets fatter
When I’m in a constant rage cause it seems Black Lives don’t Matter
I’m still unapologetically Black
You can’t break my spirit
You can’t make me fold
You can’t kill my vibe
You can’t take my soul
After slavery, lynchings, bombings, Jim Crow, and mass incarcerations
My people...
We’re STILL unapologetically Black!

I am an example of resistance
I hang from manufactured rope 
On the Tree of Life
I didn't live a Brothers Grimm fairy tale
Conceived into oppression
I was wise beyond my years 
But I've never received a White man's education 
Only domination 

I was bought and sold like sheet metal 
I've been called boy 
Inferior to my Superior 
I've been violated and raped
No one heard my screams
I was tamed like an animal
I was a field hand and a house nigger
I've picked the fabric that creates
My Master's shirt 
I've wiped his children's noses 
And prepared his daily meals 

I've tried to escape to new freedoms
Only to be brought back to plantation land 
My footprints were imprinted in Southern soil
I've been beaten without reason
My whips never healed 
I was fed up with His rules
I rebelled

Now my lifeless body dangles
Helplessly 
Before you from a noose
My legs sway to and fro
My eyes are blood-shot red 
I am an example of resistance
​
This is dedicated to my ancestor's who paved the way so that I may live freely today. 

I was listening to Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" and my mind wandered. I imagined the "strange fruit" telling his life story to the people who watched him die.

*A poem from "Just My Thoughts: Mind, Body & Soul", published July 18, 2006. ​

welcome to the forgotten poor
underfunded schools, a Chinese spot, the projects, and a busy liquor store
this is all she sees when she walks out the door
her momma tells her to study hard so she can have more
 
every day the little girl writes in her composition notebook
one story is about this five course meal and the lives that it took
short story with a moral, teach a lesson like fables
a little food for thought to feed the mass behind your navel
 
first course (soup)
first to the block
where the corners stay open
cause the dealers don’t stop and the pigs stay looking
for their next quota and everyone thinks they’re Ray Liotta
destined to be “a made man”, but they don’t understand
they’re the reason why there are fiends coming back
like loyal fans for assorted brands transacting into non-melanated hands
if politicians were only this sympathetic when the crack epidemic began
 
second course (salad)
here come the dirty boys in blue with nothing better to do
profiling innocent people of a different skin hue
thinking they’re above the law, beatings and shootings ensue
they claimed they feared for their lives, camera footage purview
getting slaps on their wrist for brutality they do
then it’s back to the streets to target another like you
 
third course (appetizer)
now peep these two men arguing
it’s hood beef their harboring
one stole a chain and the block that he claims
so he steps to the dude, figures gun fire will heal his pain
one stray in the park and my best friend’s slain
her momma screaming and crying
hide her tears when it starts to rain
but the memory of that day will remain
 
fourth course (main dinner)
next to the project bench where a little kid sits
trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents
and he feels it’s only common sense
to give to the poor and take from the rich
so he and his friends plan to hit a lick
steal a man’s wallet and carjack his whip
plan goes wrong, strapped man strikes back
local news reports kid and friends got capped
 
fifth course (dessert)
you see the street prostitutes dressed like vixens in video shoots
they hoe-ing the cooch just to get the hooker loot
when they finish what they started give a customer the boot
back to where they departed waiting for a horn toot
hitting more balls out the park than legend Babe Ruth
and the pimps in the cut stacking profits in zoot suits

if you eat what you’re fed
and that’s all that you know
then you’re conditioned on familiar
and that’s probably how you’ll grow
 
unless you beat the status quo