I find myself running

in the middle of the night with hollow eyes

thoroughbred thoughts bordering on insanity

 

Today

on 23rd and telegraph

Sprinting and hurdling

Through an asphalt field of high rises

apartment buildings cracking the sky

Im hoping

My streaming tears can wash away my tracks

the wind will shroud my scent

From negro-hungry bloodhounds

pigs

Praying police bullets won’t find sanctuary in my spinal chord

if you want us to heal

you have to take your knife out of our back

the craziest thing is that nothing’s changed

 

I can hear the dogs barking on the stale wind

Imagine their teeth sinking into bone

and shreds of black flesh finding home in the bottom of their stomachs

Thirsting for the blood of this body

Trying to kill what is human in me

 

Always  hunted

the most dangerous game

On these Oakland streets

Every season is open

everyone is a participant

No black man exempt from the purge

Ears peeled to the soul rattling sirens of bigot-filled police cars

the apocolyptic reminisce of gunshots

A deadly sport and they are ready for me to slip

--From childhood playmates to crooked police,

I don’t know where to run when they’re all gunning for me

 

The thing about runaway slaves

Is that we never stopped running

there is always monsters glued to our backs

Preying on us as if we are the savages

Every 28 hours, a black man is killed by the police

We are being slaughtered at a constant rate

These murders are mathematical

Another dies in a infinite hail of bullets and gunsmoke

Empty bodies falling onto depraved concrete

I can feel them shaking the ground beneath

my feet

where coffins and jail cells are the same size

Hear their scattered prayers for mercy

I am running

From a city of rolling heads

With professional murderers chasing after me

 

To declare freedom is to declare war

When a free black body is an intrusion to the nation

the murder of our young becomes an excuse

When the color of your skin makes you suspicious

mothafuckas still feel like they own us

 

barking of search dogs has now become a cryptic rythm

A viscous metronome

Banging in my mind for so long

its begun sounds like music

Like history

If they catch me

      I’m dead

My body beaten blue  and my soul set ablaze

 

I am not Martin, Grant, King or Till

They are dead

I am alive