i know i can not be as naive as to hope our world can run on aspirations and hopes and good things but i did not know how much we have let it rot — that we have been feeding a system made of spilt tears; too much blood; guns where there should be nothing of the sort; broken dreams with different homes; broken bodies on the streets; barely sewn together with innocent souls.
how many, i want to ask. how many of these boys and girls and fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers do you need to steal the breath from their lungs for; how many of these kids and grown men do you need to see lying on the street with red blooming on their chest and a question blooming on their lips WHY ME WHAT DID I DO WHAT COULD I HAVE DONE TO STOP THIS —
how many sons do you need to take from mothers, husbands from wives? how many more families do you need to rip apart and sow with grief? how many more before you realize it is time to stop smearing dirt over the dead just so you can justify the acts of the living? how many more before you realize that it is not right to put fault in a victim who was doing just as they were told? HOW COME THE VICTIM IS NEVER PORTRAYED AS WHAT THEY TRULY ARE: THE WRONGED?
MICHAEL BROWN. TAMIR E. RICE. ALTON STERLING. OSCAR GRANT. SANDRA BLAND. PHILANDO CASTILE. do you want me to continue? it is as if i am reading off a script: the words are pushed into my mouth they go down snarling not like their predecessors who went unarmed in the dead of night smothered by media with a bunch of green dollar bills in their yellowed mouths and slaughtered by a past they tried so hard to forget just to be brushed back under the carpet — name after name blurring together bodies piling up hidden under excuses he was just doing his job / they had criminal records / he had a gun — it gets old after the first fifty time it happens.
what then? what do you do with the plenty more bleeding out in the streets gargling back a prayer written in a malevolent shade of red that falls on deaf ears and a justice system that somehow seems anything but? WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A SYSTEM THAT IS CONDITIONAL AS THE FREEDOM IT OFFERS what do you do then?
oh, they had it coming / they deserved it / they were a criminal, you say with a smile on your face, too eager to forget, and i grit my teeth and want to scream WHO DESERVES TO GO OUT LIKE THIS nothing more than a fizzle of a bang and dark asphalt under fingernails and blood desecrating streets you once thought was safe WHO DESERVES TO DIE LIKE THIS TELL ME WHO DESERVES TO DIE LIKE A DOG ON THE STREETS LEFT THERE FOR THE ENTIRE WORLD TO SEE
since you seem to have all the answers, sir, why don't you tell me?
⌑ ⌑ ⌑
otherwise entitled:
"this freedom tastes bitter in my mouth"
7.07.16 || kt
a/n: pardon me if you feel as if i have no say in this, seeing as i am not african-american, but i needed to express my opinions on the following events that transpired in the following days. america is a scary place right now, and i would just like to let you know that i am here for you.
