After the Burning of the 3rd Precinct In memory of George Floyd Last night I walked down to the pond I wanted to watch the bright moon Hanging in the dark sky It calms me Her light moved smoothly over the water Whisper rhythms of soothe and ease Above me Trenton’s street lights spilled into the night sky An ominous amber creeping in to the deepening blue The clouds, drifting lazily Crossed between the moonlight and me To illuminate a beautiful burning Outlining an aura of perfect peace At that exact moment More than a million miles away A few blocks from the place Where George Floyd was murdered The same moon stared down Unwavering Watering eye still shining Behind plumes of smoke blooming From the funeral pyres of an apparent Infinity of dead men And women & children, but No Not them Not when But now This night This liquor store alight Big box stores torn open Swarmed By the less-than clutching more Than their arms can carry The materials Good Americans know Will fill the holes in our empty hands This is a lie A lie we are told By men who lurked laughing Behind a repugnant puppet president Who typed: shoot them. Mashing his fat fingers Into the blank stare screen That slices between his absurd reality And everyone on the other side When he hits send He closes his eyes To the shards of a shattered promise of peace His words sing the sharp crack of gunfire and broken glass of shrieks of a fractured skull These echoes ache through history That president mocked progress When he broadcast a 60-year-old quote From a police chief who hunted With a pack of dogs Siccing them on those Less-than men & women & children This man did not mind Being accused Of police brutality, but rather Wore his hatred Like a badge Of shattered honor Embedded in his chest And the last lynching was reported 40 years ago, What a joke. Men with hearts Wrapped up in white sheets Still steal breath From people they’ve made prey: Women in their beds asleep Children in the park at play And so many scared men Made into ghosts Their killers covered up the white with blue But still they kneel on rope burned necks In reverence of that way back when Until these less-than men Have no life left to leak weak whispers Begging to breathe While those who are nooses Cannot be condemned By their brothers in arms And maybe they were good men Until they fell in And maybe they still strain to move against The rip tides that tear black lives apart But it's too tiring for most to not get pulled under By a hatred so deeply ingrained Paired with power They change Our minds are made that way The same way they are made to respond to trauma Certain sections of the brain just jerk to a halt A physical resistance to processing thoughts The cables get crossed tangled and cut Open only to survival instincts: Fight flight or freeze Last night When their choice was fight Over four hundred years of bone deep burning The highest caliber of hurting anger fear shame pain Exploded As the precinct burned Black silhouettes stood with fists raised And the flames traced a different shape Than chalk white outlines around Bodies on black streets We have this moment to ask How do we unteach a trauma So entrenched in history An eternity of horror Burned into black skin Of men and women and children Freed To go ahead, Try to breathe Inhale in the smoke of crosses burning Exhale a smothered, whisper plea He said “Please,” He said “Please Mama I can’t breathe”
November 21, 2024
The Student Newspaper of Mercer County Community College Since 1968
