Uprising

Difficult to write when the fire is

 burning out of control.

Difficult to speak.

I would rather scream,

guttural,

unhinged at the jaw,

mouth agape,

swallowing entire cities whole.

With a knee to the neck,

arms and legs pinned down,

beneath the weight of violence,

 blatant disregard to the value of

a human life,

and criminal abandonment,

the soul of a community

beaten and belittled every day,

will eventually fight back,

in a last ditch effort to survive.

To survive,

among  death and destruction,

in all four directions,

to survive,

in a city that says,

“why haven’t you died yet?”

It is not the rage of the people that has laid waste to the landscape.

The dead of body,

dead of spirit,

piled high on the funeral pyre,

long before the grief of oppression took the streets,

long before the first hand threw the first stone,

he who is free from consequence

has long been kicking down faces and breaking down minds.

I am in pain for the children of the uprising,

ashamed of my neglect,

that I ,

 their mother,

could not raise them to feel free to voice their pain loud enough ,

 to fortify their words strong enough,

to elevate their minds high enough

 above the hands that stole from them their  humanity,

making  our children,

 more priceless

  to prisons,

 than to their own  neighbors,

that see  human beings ,

as disposable wreckage,

to be swept off the streets,

along with the rubble.

We are outraged,

but we will not come with bricks in hand.

We will come united.

Launching truths heavier than stones

and not one wall

that shields racism and greed,

 will stand before us.

When the tear gas clears nothing of these monuments to slavery will remain.

Our minds are free,

our  voices,

 unshackled ,

and united rise above the din of so much hate.