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