Black grief. It's generational. My ancestors' blood pumps rage through my veins, as the system drains it from the bodies of our boys, girls, children, men, women, people.
On my drive home from work, I see a state cop pull over a Black man that he forces our of the vehicle. I wonder, should I have stopped? What's his fate? Bullies with badges are trigger happy white supremacists that have always been out for our Black blood. Our Black skin is portrayed as a threat, is it beacause when the sun beats down on us, we glow? But when will the State stop beating us like we are still enslaved?
Runaway into the resistance. Revolt. Link arms with the People and celebrate the armed resistance of our beautiful Black history. We are more than what happened to us. We are what happens to the world we transform. We are our rage and our softness wrapped into a package deal, with thick thighs, sunkissed melanin skin, and curls that bounce in our prideful struts for liberation.
We are more than just hashtags, we are people who deserve to live and not just survive. We are people. Black people. And when we have fallen by the hands of the State, we have not truly died, as we live on in the uprisings and the grief of it all. We live on in the rightful rage of the parents who lost their abies, the siblings who lost their siblings, and the children who lost their parents.
We live on in their tears, their screams, and the People's struggle for liberation. We will know freedom. We will know a life where out skin is seen as beauty. We will know a world where our communities are safe, because of abolotion. We will know justice. Because we are people, we are Black people, who have always known what it meant to fight for not just our lives, but the entire world.
This poem is dedicated to John Zook Jr., his son, who deserved to grow up with his father, and all the Black people whose lives were unjustly taken by the police state.
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