June, 2020 – Hell in a Handbasket - 2. Part Two: * redacted *

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Part Two:

Black Lives Matter

 

 

VII.

“I can’t breathe”

A cry goes up

Through the Nation, while he,

Fake bone-spur coward that he is,

Hides behind the feckless brass of our generals

In the Hitler-fortress bunker beneath

The debased symbol of the White House…

And all because, dread reality

Wakes through the Nation –

Playtime’s over.

 

 

VIII.

Secret Service with pepper spray

The So-Called dog-whistled as his

Personal “S.S.”

 

His S.S. squad might deny it,

But they forget, unlike Nazis,

Our phones capture them.

 

Brutal, Brutal, Brutal nightmare

The Right to Assembly gets maced

‘Fore the Peoples’ House.

 

 

IX.

 

LESSONS FOR THE KIDS

 

Will it never stop?

 

A Texas man shot cold in his

own living room by a tired

policewoman wandered into

her neighbor’s apartment.

Lesson: Lock your doors.

The police might kill you.

 

A Kentucky woman, exhausted, as

she’s a Frontline Fighter on the

Corona front, asleep in her bed,

Shot eight times – asleep in her bed –

While the cops’ excuse – “Wrong apartment.”

Lesson: Don’t fall asleep.

The police might kill you.

 

A New Jersey motorist, out of

gas on a Turnpike shoulder,

is forced to sit in the back-of-the-

bus seat of a State Trooper’s car –

then shot six times for daring to leave it.

Lesson: Don’t drive black.

The police might kill you.

 

In Minnesota, a man with the

mother of his child in the

passenger seat, shot pointblank

at his rolled-down car window,

after telling the cop who pulled

him over for no reason, that

he had a registered revolver in

the glovebox, and killed when

ordered to take it out, shot point-

blank, for no reason, with the

man’s child in the back seat.

Lesson: Armed; Unarmed.

The police might kill you.

   

Botham Jean, Breonna Taylor,

Maurice Gordon, Philando Castile,

there were countless more before you,

and there will be countless more

to follow your slaughters, no doubt.

Lesson: Fuck the police.

The police will kill you.

  

Will it ever stop?!

 

 

X.

But the poem above

Is a sham – what about

All the others, you ask?

What about, say…

 

Rodney Levi – shot by RCMP in New Brunswick after a road-stop

Kenneth Anthony Howard – cop-shot outside convenience store in Georgia

Freddie Gray – detained for no reason, then killed, handcuffed, by Maryland police in their transport wagon

Tamir Rice – 12-year-boy killed in a drive-by shooting by police in Ohio, playing with his red-tipped toy gun in front of his own home

Michael Brown – teenager killed by police in Missouri

Eric Garner – killed by police-chokehold in New York while he begged for his life

Walter Scott – shot dead by police for a busted taillight in South Carolina

Sandra Bland – lynched by police inside a Texas police station; her “crime”? not putting out a cigarette fast enough in her own car when stopped for no reason

Alton Sterling – executed pointblank on the ground by a Louisiana cop

Samuel DuBose – university student killed in his car by an off duty Cincinnati campus cop

Oscar Grant III – killed on the floor of a train station by transit police in California

Terence Crutcher – shot in the middle of a road, unarmed, in Oklahoma

Sean Bell – killed by 50 rounds of cop-bullets fired into the building from the outside a club in New York

Amadou Diallo – 23-year-old unarmed sidewalk seller, cop-killed in New York

Jamar Clark – killed by police at a birthday party in Minnesota

John Crawford III – taken down by cops in an Ohio Walmart toy department

Jonathan Ferrell – shot in the back by North Carolina police on a road in the middle of the night

Akai Gurley – cop-shot while walking downstairs at his home in New York

Meagan Hockaday – killed by California police, shot 15-inches from her face, in her own front hall

Ezell Ford – mentally ill and defenseless man put down by California cops

Ramarley Graham – killed by a cop in his own bathroom in New York

Jeremy McDole – paraplegic shot in his wheelchair by cops in Delaware

William Chapman II – unarmed 18-year old killed by policeman in Virginia parking lot

Justine Damond – shot by a cop after she reported a rape happening behind her home

Kelly Thomas – mentally ill homeless man beaten to death by six California cops

Rayshard Brooks – shot twice in the back by a cop in a Wendy’s parking lot in Georgia

Alexander Martínez Gómez – 16-year-old boy shot execution-style by a Mexican cop because he’s American

Ariane Lamont McCree – killed by police while handcuffed, facedown, on a South Carolina parking lot

Danquirs Franklin – killed by policewoman while he was standing outside a North Carolina Burger King

Malcolm Williams – killed by an Indiana State Trooper for a broken taillight

David McAtee – killed in a 7-11 parking lot for peacefully protesting by a Kentucky militia-man

Tony Timpa – killed by asphyxia, begging for his life, by cops after he called 911 in Texas for medical help

Tony Green – shot in the back by a Georgia policeman on a road

Daniel Shaver – killed by cop with automatic machine gun while on his hands and knees, crawling unarmed, begging for his life outside his Arizona motel room

Kenneth French – developmentally challenged man killed by a cop in a California Costco; his parents there, begging for their boy’s life

Javier Ambler – begged “save me” before Texas police took his life for a traffic stop

Keith Lamont Scott – killed by North Carolina police for sitting in his car, outside his own home, while his wife begged for his life; afterwards, the cops pulled down his pants and left his genitals exposed while he died slowly, alone

Korryn Gaines – unarmed woman killed in her car by Maryland police; they also shot her 5-year-old son in the backseat, leaving him alive but with permanent damage

Alfred Olango – unarmed man who called 911 for assistance with mental illness, shot multiple times by the California police who responded

Atatiana Koquice Jefferson – shot through the glass of her Texas home’s back window by unannounced cop; she had been babysitting her young nephew at the time

Paul O'Neal – unarmed 18-year-old shot by two Chicago police officers in the back

Deborah Danner – 66-year-old woman shot in her own living room by New York cops

Joseph Mann – mentally ill man shot in the street by California police after the cops first tried to run him over with their patrol car

Abdirahman Abdi – killed outside his front door by cops in Ontario, who induced cardiac arrest by repeatedly punching the man’s face and the back of his legs

Adama Traoré – beaten to death in a French police station for not having his ID with him

Makome M'Bowole – 17-year-old boy shot in the face at close range during a French police “interrogation”

Ariel Roman – shot twice by a Chicago policewoman at a subway staircase; his ‘crime’? using the unlocked doors to walk between two train cars

Laquan McDonald – 17-year-old shot sixteen times in fourteen seconds while walking away from Chicago police

Micah Xavier Johnson – suspect in a sniper shooting killed by a police bomb while sleeping in his car

Sean Monterrosa – peaceful protester kneeling on the ground, shot by a California cop five times while the 22-year-old was raising his hands in surrender

Mario Woods – shot countless times by five San Francisco policemen while he walked down 3rd Street

Luis Gongora – homeless man killed in less than 30 seconds after six San Francisco cops dragged him out of his tent; six rounds were pulled from his body

Bettie Jones – grandmother of five, killed by police bullets as she stood in the doorway of her Chicago home

Quintonio LeGrier – mentally ill 19-year-old shot seven times in the same Chicago incident that killed Bettie Jones, who was trying to save his life

George Floyd – killed by asphyxia, begging for his life, in Minnesota

Ahmaud Arbery – shot in cold blood by three men ‘deputized’ by local police in Georgia

 

And these victims merely

scratch the surface,

and most only happened

in the last five years.

 

So, what about them,

dear reader?

 

Can we really believe

anyone claiming

not to “get” the

BLM movement

anymore…?

 

If they try, don’t believe them,

Or their lie for a second; they know.

They know this is the way they like it.

 

So don’t believe anyone

who says they don’t understand

the issues – because after all –

 

You owe it to the people

named here, and the

many, many, many

more not named here,

not to believe their lies.

 

 

XI.

Protest.

One foreign headline said it all:

“Peaceful Protests Against

Police Brutality Met With Shocking Wave

Of Police Brutality.”

 

Protest.

The fake ‘Open the Economy Now’

Stars and Bars tanktop-wearing goons

Praised for the “bravery” of making sure

Covid burns like fever through the Black Economy.

 

Do you care? One headline

Mean more to you than the other?

 

 

XII.

Words are my curses and blessings.

They hurt their creator – me – more

To set down methodically, one by one,

Than for an aghast reader

To breeze through them.

 

Curse and blessing.

It can be no other way.

 

 

XIII.

 

OLE HATRED’S SONG

 

Refrain:

Rand Paul, so-called Kentucky ‘Senator’,

but really just another get-rich-quick bigot,

deserves the wrong-side of History footnote

he’s made of himself. Yes, sir!

 

Chorus 1:

When asked about his opposition to Gay Rights

protections from being fired from a job

for one’s orientation, he said with a tut-tut:

“Well, they shouldn’t be doing

that at work.”

 

(recap Refrain: Rand Paul…just…another bigot, etc)

 

Chorus 2:

When actively opposing making lynching

a Federal hate crime, he said: “Not needed!”

Such measures of White Justice are things

of the good-ole past…. Meanwhile, two in

California, so far, have been found hanging

from trees before Old Glory flag posts.

 

(recap Refrain: Rand Paul…rich-quick…footnote, etc)

 

Chorus 3:

When pressed to show his true colors of

hatred for all ‘not his kind,’ we learn he

thinks LGBT folks are no better than

the dirty-word “homo…SEX-ual” means

in his wide-stance, toe-tapping

grease trap of a brain.

 

We learn his defense of lynching

caused others of his same “Birth

of a Nation” criminality to display

Black men – like Christ on a burning cross –

hanged from a tree, like blood

sacrifice to the Stars and Stripes;

to the Powers that Be.

    

Refrain:

Rand Paul, so-called Kentucky ‘Senator’,

but really just another get-rich-quick bigot,

deserves the wrong-side of History footnote

he’s made of himself. Yes’ems, boss!

 

And they wonder why we kneel

at the National Anthem;

And they wonder why the flag

is burned at protests.

 

 

XIV.

…so many dead…

and for what…

 

All ‘guilty’ of having their lives

encounter that of a cop’s

who’ll go home to dinner

after a hard day of killin’!

 

All ‘guilty’ of living in a land where

police are permitted to be

the alpha-omega of anyone’s life –

their Judge, Jury and Executioner.

 

…but will they really let

things be changed….

 

 

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