Hanks Pond July 4, 2020

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Laurelwood July 2, 2020

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answering back

When you get right down to it

Some people who should know better 

Support the police even now 

Despite all the images of brutality and murder.

A neighbor put up a sign on their lawn

Provoking us to put signs in our windows 

Facing them answering back 

Black Lives Matter.  Stop Police Violence. 

Probably someone they know asked them 

To put up the sign with the blue line across 

Praising cops who assault defenseless protestors

As heroes bravely defending us.

Probably they have watched too many cop shows

Making them out to be the good guys

Protecting us from all the bad people everywhere 

Even as they break the law interrogating suspects.

Perhaps they have a relative who is a cop

Or the person who asked them is related to a cop

Who chooses to take the money and go against us

Serving this system of injustice and oppression.

Because it's the PBA who distributed their sign

Giving it away free to try to get a show of support

In our neighborhood where almost everyone is white 

Making it the best place around to confront racism.

Where we are privileged to be safe from profiling

But not from offensive racist displays and remarks

We were happy to see a huge Black Lives Matter sign

On the lawn across from where we know a cop lives.

this time for keeps

If the coincidence of what else happened

On any particular calendar date in the past

Determined anything about our lives based on our birth date

Then you might as well believe in astrology.

But the contours of the events that surround us

Growing up in a particular place and time

Do inform our awareness of the world as adults

What we know personally without a doubt. 

You living in Detroit in the 1950s automobile prosperity 

When almost everything was made in USA

To the summer of 1967 when the rebellion was crushed

Awakening awareness of racism and resistance. 

Me witnessing that inner city burning

And the poor whites joining in taking home the goods

And the airborne troops arriving in their convoy

On the anniversary of the Cuban revolution. 

Taking our lessons from events

Taking a new look at everything we had been taught 

Changing the course of our lives

Like what we see happening today. 

More than fifty years later this much has changed 

The increasing climate crisis threatening humanity 

The Soviet Union dismembered but China ascendant 

Cell phones capturing the brutality of racist police.

The utter failure of the decadent capitalist government

To effectively contain the spread of the COVID pandemic 

Compelling more and more people to consider alternatives 

Including the youth who bring their energy to the struggle. 

There's going to be a day like Bastille Day again 

With the poor and oppressed jubilantly released from prison 

When the entire ruling class is dispossessed 

Liberating reparations and the promise of a better future.

What is possible with a government set up for all of us 

Especially the essential workers and poorest people 

Dismantling the police state and global finance empire 

This time for keeps.