A knee to the neck
Calling out to his Mama
Stop.
The feeling of dread
I have brown children
This is the world we live in.
Stop.
Gayle’s eyes filled with tears
My daughter is expecting a baby
They know it is a boy
Before the joy was dread and fear
Another black boy
Stop.
Yes, there is a negative side to humanity
(I avoided using the words dark or black)
Slavery, people trafficking, violence, abuse
War, weapons, hatred still exist
Stop.
We look for leadership
We admire and pray for the frontline
We protest racial injustice
We are dealing with a diabolical pandemic
Our world is complicated
Today it is almost upside-down
A crazy kaleidoscope of human activity
We are tumbling around in a jar of discordant pieces
We look for art- for mosaics of shimmering colors
We see the red of blood
As an elderly man is knocked down in the street
We cannot trust leaders
Who are more concerned about property damage
Than the loss of human life
Along with social distancing is social connectivity
We stand together to protest police brutality
Did Floyd and Chauvin ever dream they would become historical figures?
We receive human kindness
In bottled water from gloved hands and masked faces.
Eli, Eli. Lama sabachthani
The words from the Cross
My God, why have you forsaken me/us?
We go biblical, we go Koranic, we follow The Way, we go Karmic
We know this too shall pass
The graves in Brazil, the morgue trucks in New York mock us
The words, “I can’t breathe” float through the air
We look at our present
We talk about what happened in the past
Will we learn?
Will we change?
Will we perpetuate?
We just want to go back to Normal
Whatever that now means.
Anita Raturi 