Perspective...

 

Source - Science: evidence is intelligence, Facebook

January 28, 2024, the Griot Poet

This spell is a poetic composite of trolls online I have encountered and how I handled them.

After posting several pictures of my hero, Dr. Ronald E.McNair, and others for February,

I received this short missive from someone in their mommy’s basement:

 

“Since we have Black History Month, why don’t we have White History Month? Why do we have Women’s History Month, LGBT History Month, Asian-Pacific Islander History Month, and Hispanic Heritage Month? Isn’t that reverse racism? Isn't that heterosexual discrimination? Don’t ‘all lives matter?’”

 

I often encounter trolls who think that they are being clever in posting things like this,

Their mentality involves “narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism.”

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-online-secrets/201409/internet-trolls-are-narcissists-psychopaths-and-sadists

 

My wife always asks, “Why do you BOTHER answering them?”

My answer is always the same: “Because they asked!”

 

“We already have one,” I started my preamble.

February 1 to February 28,

February 29 on leap year occasions,

 

I start my retort,

Like a lawyer in court,

With “what if” scenario questions:

 

What if Thomas Jefferson,

Who wrote the poetic “All men are created equal.”

Wasn’t also pedophile-raping a fourteen-year-old baby named Sally Hemming?

Whose mother was also the product of rape by Martha Jefferson’s father?

George Washington had dentures made out of the teeth of enslaved servants.

DL Hugely pointed out on Instagram that humans are complex,

You can “write dope shit” and still be a psychopath.

 

What if the freed, formerly enslaved Africans were immediately paid reparations?

What if they got government subsidies for real estate and property expansion, just like the government did white western settlers?

What if they were taught a quality education for participation in the body politic?

What if Black Wall Street In Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Rosewood in Florida hadn’t been razed out of existence?

What if the fusion government in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898 had been allowed to exist?

What if the Ku Klux Klan hadn’t killed or thrown out the elected officials, razed the black newspaper, and threatened its editor with lynching?

What if Central Park was still the black township of Seneca Village?

 

Would there have been an Emmett Till?

Would there have been a need for a Montgomery Bus Boycott?

Would there have been the need to “Sit In” at the F.W. Woolworth counter?

Would there have been a March on Washington on the same date that Emmitt was lynched?

Would Trayvon Benjamin Martin have become his modern equivalent?

Or Jordan Davis, Reneisha McBride, Sandra Bland, Breona Taylor, Michael Brown, or too many, I'm too exhausted to name?

Dr. King wouldn’t have left Dexter Avenue Baptist Church’s pulpit,

And might have lived to a ripe old age without much incident.

 

What if the descendants of the white men who lynched Emmett Till, a child, stopped taking potshots at his grave marker?

What if the practice of Black History Month is corporate whitewashing of what Dr. Carter G. Woodson originally intended?

Dr. Woodson gave oppressed people the tools to fight against gaslighting.

Just like they jumped on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion bandwagon after lynching George Floyd on livestream.

 

What if Malcolm Little’s dad hadn’t been lynched?

What if his mom hadn’t been committed to an insane asylum?

What if he and his siblings hadn’t been split up in foster care?

You wouldn’t have created a Malcolm X.

 

What if, indeed?

Because if all these hypotheticals had happened,

We wouldn’t be having this conversation!

 

You’re so vexed about not having a month specifically named for your culture,

You missed the point that our hidden history is a reliving of shared trauma.

Just like Asian-Pacific Islanders Month has to discuss the Chinese Exclusion Act, the fact that the U.S. interred George Takei and his family (Mr. Sulu of Star Trek), and the U.S. TOOK the Kingdom of Hawaii as a naval coaling station!

Just like Women’s History Month is about struggles with patriarchy.

Just like LGBT History Month must discuss the assassination of Harvey Milk, the murder of Matthew Wayne Shepard, and the police attack on Stonewall.

Just like Hispanic Heritage Month has to discuss Cesar Chavez, the plight of Hispanic agricultural workers, and the fact that “remember the Alamo” is superfluous,

Since you conveniently forget that the whole conflict was that Mexico wouldn’t extradite escaped Africans back to the United States!

 

Cubans who escaped Castro were allowed to touch Florida’s shores,

Haitians, whose ancestors repelled French colonialists, are turned back with a shoulder shrug.

 

As a matter of fact,

HAITI had to pay FRANCE for 122 years: reparations.

20 to 30 billion in today's dollars.

The cost of colonizers losing free enslaved labor,

Started in 1825 directly to the Gauls, having the gall to ask for it,

Transferred in 1922 to the National City Bank of New York, now Citibank.

This HEIST is the cause of Haiti’s poverty, NOT indigenous religious practices!

 

So my perspective,

To your objections,

Is like Jack Nicholson said in “A Few Good Men,”

“You can’t handle the truth,” or this smoke!

 

Interestingly,

My online troll choked,

And I did not read a single word of rebuttal from them going forward.

Narcissistic Collapse...

 

© August 2, 2023, the Griot Poet

“Narcissistic collapse occurs when a narcissist’s ability to uphold their grandiose, confident image is threatened. As a result, they often become enraged, resulting in impulsivity, intense lashing out, or harm to others. While this reaction isn’t typically intentional, it’s a way for the narcissist to re-establish a sense of control.

 

“People with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) often look down on others to maintain the positive images they hold about themselves. If their behavior is called out or challenged, their fragile self-esteem is damaged, resulting in intense reactions and abuse toward others.”

 

Source: https://www.choosingtherapy.com/narcissistic-collapse/

 

Half of the country experienced a narcissistic collapse in 1861,

The previous year, Stephen Douglas, the candidate for the presidency representing the South, lost to a lanky lawmaker from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.

Not able to accept the outcome of a free and fair election,

Starting with South Carolina and ending with Texas,

Each entered into history,

Their disapproval of the new Republican Party,

And the President-Elect, Abraham Lincoln,

Offering Articles of Secession,

Patterned after the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens’ “Cornerstone Speech,”

Each elucidates the false narrative of the “inferior African.”

 

Source: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech

 

Illustrating the difference between the North and the South,

And a full-throated defense of Antebellum enslavement.

 

The same who plowed their fields and made their wealth,

The same whose flesh was so “wretched,” they sired Mullatto children and practiced “buck breaking” of men in front of their families.

History is whitewashed because of its depravity.

 

They engaged in an act of “creative fiction.”

After losing the war against the North,

It became the first “Big Lie” in the “Lost Cause” narrative.

Nathan Bedford Forrest formed a domestic terrorist organization,

Haunting the newly freed women and men as evil spirits.

 

Cyrus I. Scofield,

In an extension of this literary tradition,

Without education or training in theology,

Wrote a study Bible,

Used today in seminaries,

Popularizing the rapture,

An escape hatch for the losing side in an uncivil conflict,

That eschatology, prior to the Civil War, did not exist.

It was to escape for them a world that had become a hellscape,

 

The War was over, and they were supposed to treat Africans, Asians, Hispanics, Immigrants, and Native Americans like citizens and not beasts.

 

The once dominant caste’s self-esteem was based on the lesser classes’ debasement.

 

Then came Charles Darwin and “Origin of the Species,”

 

They suddenly were not “God’s chosen,”

They weren’t special or divine.

The Scofield Monkey Trials began.

Dressing in sheets, castrations, and burning crosses, they had clearly lost their minds.

 

Racism is the ultimate narcissism.

Every ism and phobia their natural children.

Because,

When the narcissist’s culture, or individual’s “ability to uphold their grandiose, confident image is threatened. They often become enraged, resulting in impulsivity, intense lashing out, or harm to others.”

 

Like a Civil War.

Like lynching.

Like medicine practiced on enslaved women without anesthesia.

Like razing Black townships, Black Wall Street, and Rosewood out of existence.

Like not bothering to pay any of the survivors' reparations.

Like using Black children in Florida as crocodile bait.

Like Jim Crow.

Like Emmitt Till.

Like Trayvon Benjamin Martin.

Like Jordan Davis.

Like Renisha McBride.

Like Breonna Taylor.

Like Sandra Bland.

Like Tamir Rice.

Like George Floyd.

Like stochastic terrorism.

Like Wilmington, North Carolina, 1898.

Like Red Summer, America, 1919.

Like January 6 at the US Capitol.

 

This brief history is giving a few of you cognitive dissonance.

If it was hard for you to hear it, think how gut-wrenching it was to write it.

If it was hard for you to hear it, think how it was for my ancestors to LIVE it!

The solution isn’t to “ban books,” but to man up to our shared history and face it!

 

Peep this:

He’s thrown business partners, lawyers, and close associates under the bus to save his [own] ass: What makes you think that you’re not next?

 

I keep spitting facts because we can’t have peace in this country or on Earth unless a sizable portion of MAGA gets psychological assistance.

 

I am “the voice calling in the wilderness” because you THINK you want a dictatorship, but you, like me, if we’re still alive, will be its servants!

 

I keep challenging your ignorance because we are fifty states, but right now, not united.

 

If we save ourselves from this narcissistic collapse, we can save the planet!

Killing Fields...

Image Source: Instagram

© February 15, 2023, the Griot Poet

Inspired by “An Economic Civil War to Stop Mass Shootings,” Countdown With Keith Olbermann’s podcast, I-Heart Radio, 2/15/23.

 

Sports commentator

Jemele Hill’s saved tweet,

Sums up our national sociopathy:

 

Quoting Dan Hodges: “In retrospect, Sandy Hook marked the END of the gun control debate. Once America decided that killing children was bearable, it was over.”

 

Children,

[Who] on December 14, 2012,

[Had] every right to dream about a white Christmas: they lived in Connecticut,

And New England is known for its winter weather.

 

Children,

[Who] on December 14, 2012,

[Had] every right to dream about what they would be when they grew up: a scientist, a writer, a poet, a musician, a lawyer, a teacher: all possibilities lost.

 

Children,

Who were six,

You do the math: they should be graduating from high school and getting ready to be first-year students in college.

We don’t get legislation,

We get the reflexive “thoughts and prayers” shtick,

Knowing full well that the only gods these monsters respect are Mammon and Moloch!

Personifications of greed and avarice,

And the sacrifice of innocents on “cremation pyres of care,”

 

Children,

One of which, her parent,

An IBM researcher,

I witnessed his mad dash out of the facility at the news of another gun massacre:

His daughter didn’t make it.

 

Children,

Another parent at Sandy Hook,

A jazz musician,

Jimmy Greene,

Composed in his, and his wife, Nebla Marquez’s grief,

An ode to their daughter, Ana Grace Marquez-Greene.

 

Twenty children, who should be freshmen in college,

And six teachers, who should be with us, and eleven years closer to retirement.

 

Alex Jones made mountains of cash,

That would make Midas blush,

Saying that Sandy Hook was staged,

That there were no dead children,

That they were “crisis actors,”

 

Where are the teachers, Alex?

Where are the children enrolled in college?

Why are you filing for bankruptcy to escape accountability?

 

The day before the fifth anniversary of the Parkland massacre,

We get Anthony McRae,

Who should not have been allowed to purchase or possess a weapon,

He goes to Michigan State University,

With no affiliation,

He killed three and severely wounded five,

Before the police could arrest him alive,

The coward took his own life.

 

One of Anthony’s victims,

She was a survivor of Sandy Hook.

Jackie Matthews,

A senior at MSU,

“We can no longer allow this to happen. The fact that this is the second mass shooting that I have lived through is just incomprehensible. We can no longer [just] provide love and prayers. It needs to be legislation; [needs] to be action. It’s not OK.” [1]

 

David Hogg,

Survivor of Parkland,

“I’m just so frustrated at the fact that we’re still in the same place. I have a special message for the Republicans and conservative gun owners who don’t agree with me in the first place. Look, I can respect people who don’t agree with me, but I can’t accept that there is nothing that we can do as Americans to keep the number one thing we all care about, which is our loved ones and especially our children, safe.” [1]

 

The debate is over: we’re a nation led by sociopaths.

 

They are part of a ghoulish death cult cheering for the apocalypse.

Which means that we can’t do anything about gun violence or climate change,

The kind that pimps out their gas-guzzling trucks with smokestacks to “own the libs,”

Like they’re breathing oxygen on another planet!

 

Ghouls don’t mind a good bloodbath,

Because if you look at the stock market after,

Every gun massacre,

Indexes like Smith and Wesson,

After the smoke clears,

Perform at their peak,

They care far less about their voting constituents,

And more about the Gun Lobby,

Who, after the Orwellian “Citizens United,”

Are getting bags of money from government lobbyists,

Who have their conservative audience-tested talking points,

So, like automatons, they don’t have to think about it when they recite them.

 

Young women in high school are showing signs of depression,

Heterosexual, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender,

Some have expressed suicidal tendencies,

This phenomenon has nothing to do with their sexuality [2]

Maybe it’s because

Since kindergarten, they’ve been doing “run, hide, and fight” drills.

Some of it you can blame on social media,

Creating avatars not reflecting reality,

 

Or maybe,

The girls realize that they live in killing fields,

Each morning they say, “I love you, mommy,” which might be their last.

That the young man whose affectionate advances they’re not feeling,

He might bring a weapon to class to express his Incel grievances,

 

People who tout the Second Amendment,

Live in gated communities and Cul de Sacs,

In “Leave it to Beaver Villes,"

Nothing ever affects them, or ever will,

All the massacres are the byproduct of doing business,

Who cares if your children are massacred?

“Thoughts and prayers” are free; legislation isn’t.

 

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

 

Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Thomas,

All of you aficionados of “original intent.”

 

Riddle me this:

Where are the words “purchased” and “ownership?”

 

For the security of a free state,

The people have a right to see their babies grow up,

For the security of a free state,

We have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,”

It shouldn’t be a matter of deep philosophy,

To experience liberty and happiness, LIFE is a prerequisite!

 

I have a right to see my grandchildren enter college,

I have a right as a citizen to see them pursue their dreams and knowledge,

Freedom for gated communities and killing fields everywhere else is tyranny,

If you cannot [just] “be," then freedom isn’t freedom.

This aspect of American life has always been what freedom meant to my ancestors and me,

And as sad as my grandchildren may be,

I’d rather live to see them say goodbye to and bury me.

Vote these fascist ghouls out of office for our children and democracy.

In Swahili,

Hebu Uhura pete: let freedom ring.

 

Sources:

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/michigan-state-university-senior-who-also-survived-sandy-hook-shooting-its-not-ok/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/health/teen-girls-sadness-suicide-violence.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Woke...

Robert Reich: Substack

 © December 2, 2022, the Griot Poet

Sources:

https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/woke-meaning-word-history-b1790787.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke

 

If you were enslaved in 1850,

You learned the skill of sending messages,

In songs that gave subtle instructions:

 

“Swing low, sweet chariot,

“Coming forth to carry me home,”

 

It sounds like a song sung by the enslaved at a wake or a funeral,

Until you get to stanzas like:

 

“I looked over [at] Jordan, and what did I see?

“Coming forth to carry me home,

“A band of angels coming after me,

“Coming forth to carry me home.”

 

It sounds bittersweet.

Unless you realize that there is a river nearby,

And the angels were conductors,

Like Harriet Tubman,

On the Underground Railroad,

1850 to 1860,

Thirteen trips from Canada to the United States, freeing seventy enslaved people,

Including members of her family,

 

Braiding hair,

Seen by overseers and plantation oligarchs,

As the habits of savages,

Unless you looked closely at the artistry:

The knotted maps guided them along the river and the Underground Railroad to Canada, Goshen, and freedom,

 

My ancestors did not write down The Coded One Hundred(s):

It’s an intricate way of communicating through,

Braided hair,

Gospel songs,

Drum beats,

Fiddle songs,

Talking jive,

And smoke signals,

My ancestors called upon the spirits of a people,

From Alkebulan - “Mother of Humankind,” “Garden of Eden,”

Before the Roman conquerors named the continent to describe the region of Tunisia, Africa,

Ancestors who they never met,

But created cryptography,

More intricate than Alexander Graham Bell’s telegraph,

 

“Stay woke.”

Something that the runners said to each other,

It meant staying alert in your surroundings,

Theirs were the river, trees, bloodhounds, and the precursor to the police called enslaved catchers,

Reading moss, which grows on the north side of trees,

Orienting the persons pursuing freedom,

To a celestial body, in Swahili, Nyota Uhura: Star of Freedom,

Which they followed to Canada,

And Gene Roddenberry thought it so intriguing,

He named Nichelle Nichols’ Star Trek character with it.

 

“Stay woke” is from,

People who they thought couldn’t read,

Because plantation oligarchs made it illegal,

Frederick Douglass’s enslaver said that it would “ruin” him,

And lashed his wife with a whip for introducing it to him,

At threat to his [own] life,

Frederick continued reading and writing,

Frederick became a Republican abolitionist,

The progressive party back then,

Now, they’re banning books about him, like Nazis,

Except, they would prefer that you not call them Nazis, please?

 

Ron Death Santis plans to run for president.

He thinks killing “woke” plays past the northern borders of Florida.

He’s lawyer enough to know that Donald will probably be in prison.

He’s not reforming the Republican system.

They’ve been playing footsies with extremism,

Since the ads, Bush Sr ran on Willie Horton.

 

For Death Santis,

Killing “woke” has nothing to do with the bruised feelings of so-called white children.

It has to do with the fact that he’s a white supremacist.

It has to do with the fact that he’s a sociopath.

Florida HID their Covid infections and death rates,

Death Santis used taxpayer money to ship asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard from Texas,

And he STILL got re-elected!

What criminal do you know that wants to see evidence of his ancestors’ crimes?

What criminal do you know that wants to be held accountable for crimes he committed in plain sight?

Culpability makes them responsible for reparations,

Paying for them has never been on the table.

They’re stressing about 2050 when the so-called “white” population shrinks to 47%!

 

It’s about control and continued dominance.

 

Once they lose it, we’ll have universal healthcare.

Once they lose it, we’ll have a few less useless billionaires.

Once they lose it, we’ll have less income inequality.

Once they lose it, crime rates will naturally decrease,

Once they lose it, we’ll have enough resources for decent living,

Once they lose it, the human species might not cease to exist!

 

Wars from sticks, stones, and nuclear weapons,

They have always started with words and phrases,

Obfuscations that “other” people,

Because history shows what you demonize, you can exterminate!

 

We have been “staying woke” since 1619, since 1850,

Ron Death Santis has a Nano penis,

We are going to keep spitting history, jokes,

Poetry, music,

We’re going to celebrate Black History Month,

Black Lives Matter,

LGBTQ, Women, and Hispanic History Month,

Because the new majority isn’t going back into the closet,

You’re banning books because,

 

Scientia potentia est

Knowledge is power

Francis Bacon wrote in “Meditationes Sacrae” (1597),

 

ipsa scientia potestas est

Science itself is power.

Thomas Hobbes wrote in “Levitation” (1651).

 

We frame Western society on the foundation of denying access to it,

After which, they gripe about “bootstraps,”

When most of them cheated on the SAT or bribed their way into college,

 

“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his [own] bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his [own] bootstraps.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

 

So, spare me about your anti “woke” crusade,

Death Santis is going to find out about his escapades,

Won’t reach beyond his peninsula,

Just try after you lose not to start an insurrection!

 

To the Tea Party governor of Florida,

Grand Pooh-Bah of Death Santis-Stan:

 

We’re going to teach African American History,

We're going to teach Asian-Pacific Islander History,

We’re going to teach Native American History,

We’re going to teach Hispanic History,

We’re going to teach LGBTQ History,

We’re going to teach Women’s History,

Because it’s all HUMAN history!

Because the best disinfectant to fascism and disinformation is knowledge,

Because you don’t back down from bullies when they try to intimidate you,

 

Do you know what ELSE we’re going to do, Ron?

VOTE!

 

And

We’re going to “stay woke.”

And you’re going to stay a high water, knicker pants joke!

Black Klansmen...

 

From left are fired Memphis police officers Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr, Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith, and Tadarrius Bean. Photograph: MPD/Reuters/The Guardian

© January 25, 2023, the Griot Poet

 Sources:

Wikipedia/Death_of_Tyre_Nichols

2 Memphis FD employees are relieved of duty in connection toTyre Nichols’ death: NPR

 5 fired Memphis officers charged with the second-degree murder of Tyre Nichols: Washington Post

I am a political poet.

I typically riff on things like our antebellum electoral politics,

Gaslighting on Critical Race Theory,

Translation: actual American history.

Because what criminal have you ever heard of,

That wants to hear from his targets the evidence of their malfeasance?

 

I don’t shrug off or shrink,

When evil comes from places,

That I would rather not see it.

 

Every out group has an element,

So addicted to wanting power,

They will do violence to others within the group that they are a part of,

At worst, it’s a form of psychosis,

At best, it’s self-loathing.

 

Five black men killed Tyre Nichols,

Carrying the five-pointed badges from the antebellum enslaved patrol,

 

He was beaten by people who he should not have feared.

I thought this was the logic of having more diversity in the police force!

 

Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith,

Pulled over Tyre for supposed erratic driving,

I would like to think that initially, he was relieved,

Seeing the unmarked car filled with people like him,

He might have also been terrified,

We live in constant fear of the police,

 

We drill our kids with “the talk”:

Make sure you cross at the corner with the light: Don’t jaywalk.

If you’re driving and you’re pulled over,

Have your wallet ready with your license on the dashboard and, for God’s sake, NO expired insurance!

Philando Castile taught us, don’t tell them if you have a gun, registered or not,

Keep your hands at “10” and “2” on the steering column,

Visible,

Don’t make sudden moves,

Ask if you can give them any items,

Obey all orders given,

 

Do you want to know why discipline in the hood is so severe?

We’d rather beat you now than plant your remains later!

Dr. Seuss barely registers in the hood, and Dr. Spock’s irrelevant!

White picket fences are in reruns of Wally and the Beaver.

It’s the place your kids go back to after buying their drugs here,

Ferried by planes in a place where no one is a licensed pilot,

Our kids can’t talk sass to a cop,

The wrong one-liner WILL be their last!

 

Three Nobel laureates

Won the Physiology or Medicine prize in 2009,

Dr’s Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostak,

Pointing out that the DNA telomeres,

The gangly ends are the last to separate during cell division,

And controls how fast the cells go through senescence: biological aging,

Telomeres are remarkably shorter in African Americans than in other groups,

Which means we age faster,

And die younger,

Are prone to diseases and cancers,

"Black don't crack" is a misnomer.

Before the first traffic stop,

Before the first racist cop,

Particularly in this country,

The conclusion in this context:

"African Americans are under considerable stress in their current environment."

Yeah.

The same that it has been from 1619 to the present!

 

When Tyre met,

The five dark horsemen of his Apocalypse,

He was eighty yards from his front door!

Home plate is supposed to be where you’re safe,

And, in the spirit of Terry McMillan: exhale.

 

His beating,

Or lynching,

After Tyre mentally reset,

Causing his sprint,

Realizing that he might as well have been.

Eighty miles away from his parents,

 

There was a confrontation,

He ran,

From five Black Klansmen,

Followed by a second confrontation,

Tyre was beaten severely,

His mother couldn’t get through the surveillance video,

A young man had shortness of breath,

A young man, profusely bleeding,

The ambulance was called too late to intervene,

A young man died of cardiac arrest!

 

News flash:

Some white supremacists have Melanin.

WHO can we trust?

It’s no wonder that our telomeres are stressed!

 

A popular pejorative in the community is the colloquialism: “Uncle Tom.”

That’s a misread of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel.

The villain was an Anglo-Saxon Negropean named Sambo.

An overseer for their master,

KRS-ONE wordsmith-ed it to “officer.”

Who,

After Tom forgives him with his last breath,

After beating Tom to death,

Humbled Sambo into religious piety after Tom’s chastisement.

 

The five horsemen of Tyre’s Apocalypse were fired.

Two EMTs were put on administrative leave.

Ben Crump was called to the scene.

I don’t think this lessens his parents’ grief.

 

Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith,

Are the products of a system,

A color-coded, cisgender matrix exquisitely designed that,

And are willing to keep the inequality status quo by applying violence.

 

I don’t know if they were humbled,

I think their sin was getting caught!

 

Black Anglo-Saxons and Negropeans are more dangerous than Klansmen.

I don’t expect mercy from a Klansman, but I don’t expect to be killed by black men.