Say It Loud!
Your Son
When I was born a son
I cried so clear and loud.
I didn't know
My mother smiled
While choking back her tears.
She knew I shot into the world
And straight into the ground,
A knee on top my throat.
Since the morning I was born,
Every day
A knee on top my throat.
I cannot breathe,
Even when I try to run.
Always been a tall boy.
Been called a thug
Since I was twelve.
Inside the stores,
I live beneath a hundred eyes,
My shoulders and my back
Bent beneath a hundred eyes.
I try to get away
Escape where I am just a man.
It's like running underwater.
Oh god
Don't pull me over.
Please just let me pass.
I checked my lights again before,
My speed eleven times a second.
I almost hit a parked sedan,
My vision locked onto the rearview
Waiting for the lights,
Another check upon the never-ending lethal list,
The thousand one-way doors
That open to a bed and bars,
That swing onto a mark eternal.
Don't employ that boy.
He's one of the million bad ones
Blighting our metropolis.
He's no mayor,
No basketball player.
He probably has a gun.
He's like those we have to watch,
The other ones.
Unless,
Of course,
It just the knee,
My final moments
Bled on concrete.
I tried so hard.
I'm sorry, mom.
I cannot breathe,
I cannot swallow
Always running underwater.
- 6/2/2020