No More

Battered, broken, bruised,

Sacked, slammed, shot,

Maimed, murdered, mutilated

For

Jeering, jogging, joy,

Scared, sickness, sleeping,

Walking, whistling, working.

Are Black bodies simply sacks

Of flesh to be turned into

Strange Fruit once more?

Black, blue, and red.

The three colors blasted over the airwaves

Blanketing laptop screens across the nation.

Black as in the body deemed a menace.

Blue as in the last color they see in their eyes.

Red as in the life essence slowly painting

The sidewalk, the street, and the body cam.

Their body as the brush.

Say their names,

But lips become tired like their excuses

For life will be drained from your body

For naming the many lives stripped away.

Not all of them are bad,

But these bad apples

Will continue to spoil the bunch

Until the trees are uprooted and replaced

With

Accountability, action, attention,

Justice, justice, justice,

Reform, resilience, and respect.

A bullet kills the flesh,

But ricochets into the psyche of many.

I hope there is not a name

To remember and say

Like each letter of the alphabet.