Saturday, June 06, 2009

I know it was the blood

I know it was the blood
(In memory of the lives lost
To the senseless thing that we know as
Man’s inhumanity to man, dedicated to City of Oakland)

Oh the inhumanity of it---

I woke up this morning
With my mind
(Stayed on jesus)
Woke up this morning with my mind
(stayed on Jesus)
Hallejulah
This poem
Racing through my left ventricle
And out of my right
It lines up at my leg
(ready)
And races towards my stomach
(set)
Pivots at the heart
(go!)
Booking through my right temple
Hard heels of hard thoughts thudding squarely in the
Softness of my mind
This poem woke up today and shook me
shouted inside me
So that my body still quakes from the after effects
like the shots
That rung out
On east 73rd
When four blues fell with purple hearts
And none said a mumbling word?
While windows of wandering eyes look on
And wail
“where is the love?”
Love that was so obstructively spoiled and curd
As four men fought breath
a death
They did not deserve.
And yet this poem is not straight,
It’s curved
This poem is unwilling clipped
And shaky and suspicious
And full of grainy cell phone images
And the reality of no more second chances
For black boy be free
Like the shot that
said happy new year, Mr. Grant
And yet this poem cries tears while you rant

Oh the inhumanity of it

This poem cries
And wails the deep raging sorrow that wells up in my eyes and damns my soldier’s soul
but my tears are ice
It is cold in here
It is so cold that the words of this poem
Crack and break and flake
As they hit the harshness of hallow breath
Of the darkened mind
Of people who somehow seem to believe that
Life is a series of harsh justifications
Pow! Period, POW! period, POW! period. POW! period
Followed by three letters
Wet like war paint
Hollered from either side
Subject, verb, predicate.

They deserved it.

Harder than any shot fired
Is the gunfire of the human heart

Oh the inhumanity of it

The weight of the cross is heavy on my mind today
As I stand at the center of it
And wonder Jesus
Why?
Why in the world in this, the winter of our soul’s discontent
Is this song, this poem so this poem so
hot, unmindful, and unrepentantly retractable and red?
Why is this poem pleads to the living
To understand the humanity of the dead

Oh the inhumanity of it all
But is it really inhuman for human beings
To dehumanize each other
For blindness is to sight as
Black is to white
As sin is to cover
as
Brother is to other?
Yes in deed
I plead my brothers
To heed love’s creed
Yet still we bleed
More cain than able
To hear red seas crying out from
The killing fields
As all of Heaven hopes and waits
That maybe we as a people
Will finally get
This poem?


Because I refuse to believe that this poem is
simply a sign of our times
we’ve seen this poem before
Same theme, usual suspects
This poem is bleeding out the nail scarred holes
Called Calvary
For a man imprisoned by hate
So that love could be free
Because you see this poem is the blood that cries out for
Us, even when we are too cold to cry for each other
This is a poem that sticks closer than a brother
And with a last breath says, “Son, behold your mother”

This poem was broken and bloodied for you
Nailed to splintered wood post for you
Fed sour wine of hate for you
And yet
This poem loves you
while shouted at, spit on, beat, dehumanized,
This poem dies, but will not be funeralized

This poem is your mother’s smile
Your brother’s eyes
Your sister’s feet
And your father’s hands
This poem cries out for the four fallen soldiers
Tends to the wounds of the new years day dawn
This poem warms the chill of the frozen hearts
With a simple breath in the cool of the day
This poem is beaten, bloodied, but not defeated
But is universal, triumphant and utterly divine
Even when it is in human
This poem is daring
Because there is only one, hurt, one salvation, one love
One blood
Falling as a fountain
from a man who died so we could live
The redness cries out Father forgive
And because he died, this poem lives
And with it he left a hope so great it rips the curtain that divides us
healing the aching quake
That shook my spirit last night
and woke me up early this morning
with my mind

Stayed on Jesus

And
I know it was the blood
I know it was the blood
I know it was the blood
For me.
One day when I was lost
He died upon the cross
And I know it was the blood for me

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