Ablution of Rodney King...

Photo Credit: Law Enforcement Today

© 19 June 2012, Juneteenth collaboration: Robert Gibbons, the Griot Poet (response)


Someone said
They cleaned the pool

After Dorothy Dandridge
They changed the rule

So he could get in office

They found Emmett Till
With his face down
Chained to the bottom
Of the river

Found four little girls
After the bombs drop
After the hymns stop

How many ancestors’ cross
The river in this
Ultimate “stop-and-frisk”

Beat-down-beat
In Watts
In New Lots Avenue
On H Street
In the meat packing district
Of Columbia
In Liberty City
In Philly

Beat me down
Bust up
Beat down beat

On the mean street
On the Peachtree
In Biloxi
In Nashville

Beat up
Bust up
Shut up

A riot in the ghetto
Fire in Soweto

Bleed
Baby bleed
Baby bleed

King
Was beaten
Read all about it
Read all about it

Brutality
Brutality
Solidarity
With the KINGs

Clean out the pool
Halls and schoolyard

It’s a bleed
It’s a bleed

It’s OJ
And pimp
It’s a Simpson

Its violation
Its probation
It’s a traffic fine
It’s a life line
It’s a bleed baby:
Bleed!

*****

Brother King
Had made peace
With the Riot Within [Him]

Writing a record
Of the legacy
He wanted to be remembered for

The memory of him he
Wanted us to keep
That he was the voice
Of reason
As LA riot fires
Rose to highest pyres:

“Please…please: can we just all get along?”

We still ask that question
When the only black man elected has his
Citizenship questioned
Chimpanzee emails, watermelon patches, Al Jolson Step-n-Fetch cartoons
A faux bullet-ridden
“Outhouse”-as-bigoted-presidential-library
With faux birth certificates stamped “fake”

From birth (errs) who won’t give the myth a rest
(And fail the test questioning IF Hawaii is truly our 50th state)

With the
Equally faux graffiti:
For a good time, call Michelle; Hilary; Pelosi.

NOI did a study
That the yellow corporate journalist puppets avoid:
This president disrespected at a record pace
That probably makes “W” say: whew!

Pontius Pilate washes before the crucifixion
And I am in conundrum
Of the faces that look like mine
That would vote for a candidate
Whose religion ascribed the “Curse of Ham” to an entire ethnicity?
For a faux neutral stance in preexistence imagined

I can imagine as the android candidate
Obfuscates reality at light speed
Like his etch-a-sketch,
Secret "money is free speech"
Citizen's United-Funded campaign management
Might be hitting an eternal “reset”
Thus what he says (not what he said-said-said): is now TRUE!