Amidst a misanthropic peoples—so assumed—with minds in irons
You’ve been endowed, nay, privileged to say, since the inception of this artifice
“I’ll snatch your life!” “I’ll rape your wife!” “You’re just a thing, you nigger prentice!”
Based on presumptuous premises of innate animality
To make even the ‘Others’ see me as a threat and hindrance whose life shan’t be
So, go, the cultural vestiges that became inculcated and terraced
Affront a democratic order, a metamorphosis, but look: “It’s not there!”
An arrest? NO ARREST! Where the hell is the arraignment?
The inverse, would that occur, if there’d be a white boy on that pavement?
Looking down upon the body, now just a vessel, bereft of all life
Full impunity, legalist immunity, a bag of Skittles, no gun, and no knife
Wretched and bloodcurdling haunting screams and jeremiads
Issuing from the lips and throats of mournful mothers concomitantly sick-and-tired
Of injustices and indignities wrought from the cradle to the grave
Against the innocent young black boys, yeah they’re brave, yet still enslaved
In the cultural molds cast for them, slurry constituting cast-off fears projected
Of wanton lusts, mendaciousness, criminal proclives, persons infected
But, presumptions of a profile analogous to brute sometimes don’t matter
For Sanford is the province from which one of Five Civilized Tribes was once scattered
“Stand your ground,” on farce ground, grounded down through false entreaty
Reminisces of Jacksonian era Trails and tears, broken treaties
Of the law, semi-legal, posse-driven, to suspicion
The assumed guilt, the apprehension, attempted extinction to its fruition
All enveloped, racially encapsulated in sardonically craven mores
“Fashion the rope!” “Ignite the faggot!” “Shoot the bullets!” vigilantism forays
Into the corporeally symbolic morass that begs the question of their existence
The fearful stare, the incendiary glare, the trope pronounced: “an imitative instance!”
“Run!” “Don’t run!” “Run!” “Don’t run!” “Run!” “Don’t …” it’s so enigmatic
Motherly advice averred to black feet, absent track spikes or field cleats, becomes static
For the protocol for life’s preservation is not the same for mine or self
When the run not deemed recreational triggers a chase in predatory stealth
Or in the open, sometimes obscured, it’s still a kill that goes unpunished
The lawyers glib; the pundits speak; the racists squawk; Justice is banished
Down the aperture reserved for illusory principles and dreams begotten
A dream deferred? Nah! An enucleation of an entropic societal system faced from the bottom.
*Malik Abdul-Khaliq