The Year We Burst Into Flame - first draft
The year we burst into flame
How many rivers do we
have to cross
Before we can talk to
the boss?
All we have it seems we
have lost
We must have really paid
the cost
That’s why we gonna be
Burnin’ and a Lootin’ tonight…
Bob
Marley – Burnin’ and Lootin’
1.
The
boys are fire – voices hoarse. They are made
of
flint and ink – shirtless. Above their
waists
the
legend of Polo or Calvin Klein or plaid boxers
tell
only one of the stories we are willing to hear
and
network news willing to tell
above
the jeans clenched just below their behinds.
Mang I came out here to
come up
on a new TV or sumpn.
Den dese
niggas start talkin’
bout Mike – laying
there in the street, and
I start thinkin’
bout my cousin, and all
my niggas
and I see how dese
po-lease tryna do us
and I get mad G!
St.
Louis is burning and the boys are catching
teargas
canisters and lobbing them back.
Sometimes
the acid heat tears the cover
off
their palms. Sometimes they catch
them
in their jerseys – and their rough-inked
skins
unfurl like canvasses for the ill thud
of
rubber bullets
Mang we don’t care – dis
Darren Wilson nigga
gotta come tell ME sumpn
befo we get on up
off dese streets. Dese cracker-ass po-lice
cant fuck wit dis. Dis St Louis mang. We
ain’t goin home till he
convicted!
On
Canfield Road, the memorial is made
of
lit candles, teddy bears, Mike Brown
in
spray paint down the middle of the narrow
street. Poems, posters, books, roses, roses, roses
run
20 feet down the yellow line and Mike’s
body
ghosts itself right there in the middle
of
the street, almost as large as the grand jury
says
he is 2 months later, exact size Wilson
claims
the monstrous black boy to be
so
he had to shoot him, had to shoot him
would
do it the same way all over again,
he
says…
I’m tryna tell you, they
killin us anyway.
We dyin anyway. I don’t
give NO fuck!
I hope we burn whole
fuckin
St. Louis down if they
gon do us like that!
Fuck tryna talk to dese
poe-leece.
We aint going home
nigga!
2.
If
a boy is black and tattooed with tears,
and
says he is all out of tears - if you
are
a man out of ways to tell him
how
to overcome – if his eyes
are
large and pleading and his heart
is
hurt and his brain already alight –
if
you spent a week in bed when
you
heard the news because you
were
tired of Trayvon and Jordan
and
Rekia and Renisha’s names
in
a news that tells us every lie
about
how they once misstepped
in
third grade – if you have your own
missteps
you are praying on every
day
and a child you want to live
but
aren’t sure how to protect – if
the
ink on your own skin is a story
of
how the flesh must burn and be
reborn
– if you were once a phoenix –
if
you have to be a phoenix again –
if your body already knows
Acai
Gurley’s name or Tamir Rice’s
even
though they haven’t yet fallen
in
Brooklyn stairwell or Cleveland
playground,
but you are absolutely sure
their
bodies are plummeting down down –
if
the boys are bandannas and dreadlocks
and
thin sinewy bodies made of the
black
bark of nightsticks – if the boys
are
bullet-wounded – if the girls
are
a playground of rubber bullet
divots
– if the girls wont get out
the
streets with their babies – if they’re
crying
for their babies’ daddies in the streets
too
and all their children have your daughter’s
high
shriek – if you feel like you can’t breathe –
if
the police turn their backs on your city
and
their guns toward it – if cops half
your
age talk to you like you’re a child –
if
your students think that a pleasant
interaction
with police is if they don’t die
even
if they’ve had a gun shoved in their mouths –
if
they’ve been beat up in the back of a squad car –
if
they’ve been dropped off in Bridgeport
in
the middle of the night - if a woman
you
once made love to says what about all the
police
who die? What if she says you’re educated
you don’t have to worry
about that.
What
if you’re already teaching your daughter
several
songs of invisibility for when
a
squad car rolls up? What if
you
can already taste the blood
pooling
on the inside of your cheek?
What
if your body is a bottle filled
with
kerosene, your tongue a wick?
3.
You
give yourself over to the children
You
follow their lead
You
throw your head back
You
burst into flames
(for Lost Voices)
To schedule a reading or an appearance please contact Ofer Ziv at Blue Flower Arts at 845-677-8559 or email ofer@blueflowerarts.com. www.facebook.com/rogerbonairagard www.twitter.com/rogerbonair www.cypherbooks.com
