The Latest Catch Phrase

 

It took bodies laying on 

concrete slabs

and the blood running from white hands

and blue uniforms

for a nation to utter to each other 

with clenched teeth and lips barely parted

a new catch phrase

"Black Lives Matter."

Put the bullhorn down

cause I'm not listening to the bullshit,

I'm listening to the 

echo of sonless mothers cry out as tears rain

down on worthless prom tickets

and cap and gown with no one to wear. 

I'm listening to the cold empty barrel,

the empty chilled clip,

the round frozen in shredded flesh

on a cool autumn night,

when leaves and dreams

synonymously fall. 

I'm listening to a father who raised his boy

to be respectful,

get disrespected with TMZ-esque info that

he might've been gang affiliated,

or carrying an unfound firearm

and would've fired first had that officer

not been trained so efficiently. 

It took the economic increase

of caskets and tombstones sold to underprivileged minorities

for us 

to hop off our high horse sidewalks and notice

the noise in the gutter,

and clutter together in the streets for a weekend screaming lies like

"Black Lives Matter."

 

No one has to reiterate White lives matter, Chinaman lives matter, 

Vidas españolas importan,

Indians,

well the nation that's built its Capitol on reservation skeletons wouldn't 

speak about them mattering. 

 

It takes a new hip three word bumper sticker

to set an alarm that has been 

ringing for centuries,

and most still can't hear it. 

I pray poets are armed

when the meek inherit the Earth,

by prying it from the deafs' Royal hands. 

 

Roger Smith © 2015