When Even The Birds Have Stopped Singing
When it was ruled no longer a crime to kill boys with dark skin,
The earth piled her willpower like death warmed over
When the justice system traded in its law books for a color wheel,
The cries of anguish shouted through hollows
Of loved one’s broken bones
Became routine procedure.
When the following acts in combination were deemed criminal:
Walking alone at night
The winds shuttered at the force of this wrong
Between the closed doors of a courtroom.
When a gun learned how to change meaning
In the hand that was holding it –
A weapon in one, a safety measure in another,
Status became currency and traded trust for hate.
When racism was encrypted into textbooks,
Lurking thinly beneath the veil of social structure,
The sparrows who swooped to uncover its identity
Were struck down by lies carried on the sharp tip of a swift arrow.
When police brutality was thought
To be a relic of the past,
Ghosts awoke to tap shoulders and summon
Those who remember and are willing
To call violence by its name.
When white privilege was said to be a vicious rumor
And truth switched out for words spilled sticky sweet
Like honey dripping through pale pink lips,
Integrity closed its weary eyes and kept sleeping.
When the Mike Browns of the world
Were criminalized for being shot dead in the streets
And the Darren Wilsons made holy for their accurate aim,
The shed blood of history began boiling in the
Dirt belly depths of hurt
And rose from both headstones and
The worn soil of unmarked graves,
Spilling, rushing, rising, and seeping
The blind eyes of unbelievers
When the sky drew water from the ground
To weep sorrow over creation
For the bruised and broken men
Who cannot cry on their own behalf,
Who have lost the chance to tell their stories
Humans selfishly shielded their own bodies from this salty rain
And expected flowers to grow,
Fertilized by the decaying flesh and teeth
They had not wanted to notice.
To come to terms with “the way things are”
And accept smoothed over half apologies
As pathetic replacements for fact,
Then I’m afraid I’ll have to leave.
I cannot relate to a people
Who would burn their humanity to keep warm,
And I could never love a god
Who would call his saints to worship
Over graves built from the splintered bodies
Of black children stolen from their mothers’ hearts.
