IT IS TIME

My back may be bent, but I have fight, and drive, and a passion burning brighter than a thousand candlesticks. I will not be seen without being heard, and I will not be silent as I watch my brothers fall into the arms violence. Only to lose their mind and have to self medicate through grams and bottles of unmarked pills, then getting killed just when you think they might make it. Its been over 50 years since Dr.King made his speech so, why are we still scared to walk the street afraid, that going to the store might be our last trip. This is just the tip, of the iceberg, black mothers burying their black sons before they've even finished high school, bending their backs into 90 degree standstills. Little girls growing up without fathers because some cop decides to play God, leaving her back bent, broken, and confused. When will it stop? Please, tell me when we will stop bending our backs due to racial injustice. Guilty or innocent was for the judge and jury to decide not some cop, with the barrel of his gun placed against that of my brother's skull. They say that if we blacks conducted ourselves better our race wouldn't be an issue then tell me why my mom has blown through over a dozen boxes of tissues, because of story, upon story, upon story of a another black man that lost his life. Why must my back bend every night that my Dad walks out of this house to go to his second job. I worry, I worry he may not come home to see me graduate, or get married. I worry he will just become another statistic and the court will write him off saying that cases like his vary, leaving him in unrest and my back bent family without peace. I fear for the back of my niece. What if one day I come home to see my brother on the 7 o'clock news, laid out in the street like a piece of meat, because somebody thought he "looked threatening". The back benders fear all of the attention our cause is getting because they know we deserve revenge. But instead, despite the small numbers, we march, and peacefully hum as we clutch the arms of our back bent fathers, sisters, brothers, and mothers. Not fearing the tear gas or the pepper spray that just might rain down on our heads, we are sick and tired of lying crippled in our beds with fear in our hearts. Feeling like prime rib in a tank full of sharks, whenever you pass a cop. I'm not saying all lives don't matter, but I am black so certainly black lives matter too, everytime you go on the tube theres a black man on the ground with hands up saying "I surrender" but of course that doesn't render. When a cop has his hands wrapped around the throat of a man who is screaming he gives up, that is murder. He's a drug dealer, so it doesn't matter, he got loud with a cop, so it doesnt matter. He is black, the product of a mourning mother with a bent back and IT IS TIME he mattered.

This poem is about: 
Me
My family
My community
My country
Guide that inspired this poem: 

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