June, 2020 – Hell in a Handbasket - 8. Part Eight * redacted * III

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Part Eight:

Black Lives Matter III

 

LIV.

…Meanwhile, back in Louisville…

 

No charges brought yet –

Justice turns a blind eye to them –

 

The thugs with badges

Who stole the life of a sleeping

Breonna Taylor,

Like marauding thieves in the night,

Have lived the high life.

When they breathe, they flaunt their freedom,

Knowing just like crooks,

They’ve gotten away with murder.

 

They think it’s their right

To use “wrong address” as pardon –

Malice afterthought –

To keep their jobs and liberty;

 

To never question

their job security means more

than all their killed victims’

corpses piled at the police doors.

 

Do you want the proof? –

Do you think I’ve shock-valued this? –

Well, just consider

This humble, red-letter fact:

Breonna Taylor

Was slaughtered, in bed, March 13th,

And her cop killers

Not fired till June the 23rd.

 

No charges brought yet –

Justice turns a blind eye to them.

 

 

LV.

How does cultural erasure work

Applied against minority involvement

In creating what the dominant, oppressive

Society co-ops and does with what it likes?

 

White-washing does the trick,

And a nasty trick it is too;

LGBT History removed daily by

Thug-minded bigots on Wikipedia –

‘Cause, if you don’t already know it,

Nothing can be Gay on that platform.

 

And in San Francisco, bastion of progress?

Here the city’s public works department

Have taken “White”-washing to literal new heights,

Covering Pride and racial Community murals

Beneath the homogeny of ‘anti-vandal’ cream paint.

 

It was entirely bad enough when

The fifty-heart mural in this city for the Pulse victims

Had its Pulse dedication painted over –

Making this powerful LGBT memorial merely

“Pretty,” like a fucking ‘left my heart’ in SF

Piece of meaningless, tourist bullshit.

 

But now, the just-complete entire wall of a building

Praising Gay unity, covered over during the night.

While a little while before, another mural –

A portrait of multiracial unity – was

Covered over by Public Works.

 

Public works? A branch of city government

Taking it upon themselves to destroy public art

Erected on private property by the land’s owners?

Something’s rotten in the state of San Francisco –

Some extremist boldly decides from within the agency

Which minority art will get white-powered and erased.

 

 

LVI.

 

“If you’re privileged, and you know it,

Raise your hand! (Face-Slap)

If you’re privileged, and you know it,

Raise your hand! (Face-Slap)

If you’re privileged, and you know it,

And you really shit to show it,

If you’re privileged, and you know it,

Raise your hand! (Face-Slap)”

 

‘Reverend’ Louis Giglio said, June 14th,

Hunkered down all nice and cozy

On a soundstage with queer-hating CEO

Of Chick-fil-A(hole), and a silent Lecrae,

Evangelized how slavery must be embraced

By every “guilty” caucasian heart as

God’s warmest gift to white Privilege.

 

“If you’re full of blessèd bull crap,

Shout Hooray! (All-Day)

If you’re full of blessèd bull crap,

Shout Hooray! (All-Day)

If you’re full of blessèd bull crap,

Saying “I’m saved” like a dumb sap

If you’re full of blessèd bull crap,

Shout Hooray! (All-Day)”

 

The thing that built this country

And white empires throughout the world

As His wish – yeah, go on and say it –

As God’s “white blessing.” How can

This shit be made up – how dark can

The ultra-satanic heart of the white-devil

Really, possibly be…? How could

Anyone feel comfortable saying this – ever –

Never mind in front of a Black Community

Representative. W. T. F.

 

“If you’re god-afeared and own it,

Pass the ammo! (Amen-O)

If you’re god-afeared and own it,

Pass the ammo! (Amen-O)

If you’re god-afeared and own it,

then your gun will surely show it.

If you’re god-afeared and you own it,

Pass the ammo! (Amen-O)”

 

 

LVII.

 

“I can’t wait”

 

The summer’s heat is about to burst

Like a stifling bubble atop of us.

But here’s a question to ask of our times:

Will these tensions soon seem quaint…?

 

Three North Carolina policemen were

Terminated on June the 25th.

They’d been recorded 20 days before,

And here are some things they actually said:

Their police department’s only concern

Was “kneeling down with the black folks,” and

One particular Black officer was

“bad news.” Then adding, “Let’s see how his boys

Take care of him when shit gets rough. See if

They don’t put a bullet in his head.”

Their next topic was a Black woman who’d

Been detained the day before, calling her

The “negro” – who should have had “a bullet

In her head right then, and move on,” they said.

Next, an African American judge

Got called that “fucking negro magistrate,”

Before moving on to their coup de grace.

These men in uniform, so-called servants

To the ideals of ‘To Serve and Protect’,

Talked of buying the newest assault rifles

For the racial civil war they’ve dreamed of.

Soon “We are just going to go out and

Start slaughtering them F______ N______!”

“I can’t wait,” was said then. “God; I can’t wait.”

“Wipe ‘em off the fucking map. That’ll put

Them back about four or five generations.”

 

So, summer’s worst heat is about to burst,

And unless the good people can stop it now,

Next 4th of July might be a bloodbath,

While we’re swept along in a war

The Helter Skelter extremists dreamt of.

 

 

LVIII.

per aequoreas rauco imitatio

Decimus Junius Juvenalis

 

A TOAST!

Join me in raising a big glass

Of semi-sweet rosé

For the Karens of the Moment.

 

A TOAST!

To privileged hordes of princesses

Just getting in the way

And “speakin’ to the manager.”

 

Raise a glass to all the hissy-fitters,

Slamming groceries on supermarket floors

As a serves-you-right to clerks requesting

That they wear a mask in the checkout line.

 

One for all the sally-forthers who block

Cars in parking lots with their big asses,

Then waltz up to the police they have called

On Black families just doing some shopping;

Or that blond princess blocking a guy’s way

For daring to enter his own apartment building.

Nat’rally for her, breathing-while-black is enough

To detain him at their front door with a

‘Papers, please,’ ‘I don’t believe you’ mindset,

And then sally-forthing in front of him,

Onto the elevator, to cover buttons,

Finally stalking him all the way to his front door.

Worst part: she’d do it all over again.

 

Let’s raise a Kosher glass to the woman

At a Target Starbucks who demanded

A server remove her ‘BLM’ mask

Just because she found it “so offensive,”

Before so offensively dragging in

The Holocaust to serve her princess ways;

One’d think solidarity among all

Minorities would be a given, but –

Not for the self-entitled Karens of today.

 

Here’s a cheer for cop-call Karens:

The 911-dialer on a birdwatcher

In New York’s Central Park; her hateful words,

“He’s threatening my life,” for asking her

To leash her dog in the park’s bird preserve.

One for San Francisco’s infamous Narc,

Calling the fuzz on a chalk-stenciling guy

Placing Black Lives Matter on his own curb,

But Princess Karen ‘KNOWING’ the ‘owner’

And it wasn’t a Queer Latin guy like him –

Except, it was. Gay families still not wanted

In her Pacific Heights neighborhood.

 

And dare we leave out the spittoon-Karens?

Oh, no – for they’ve earned a special salaam

Like the woman who coughed on a young mom

Acting all uppity, asking Karen

To mask up and protect her young children;

Or the lawyer who went the extra mile and

Felt fully entitled amongst activists to

Hock a loogie and spit it in a kid’s face.

 

SO TOAST!

Raise your clenched pinot grigio

To the privileged Karens

Whose rights to protest won’t be quashed.

 

A TOAST!

To the sobering fact our nation,

Strug’ling in times of woe,

Has lost its collective damn mind.

 

 

LIX.

Rage, Rage, Rage –

our country’s lost,

set adrift

on an ocean

of Rage.

 

 

LX.

Amongst all the horror,

One statistic, one statistic among many,

Says so much.

 

On the day George Floyd had his life

Slowly squeezed out of him,

 

Five others were shot and killed by police,

On the very. Same. Day.

 

And guess what? The day those six died

Was a quiet cop-killing day

In America.

 

 

LXI.

Say Their Names II

 

Harum-Scarum backlash . . .

 

The powers that be

Lash out in ways reckless,

Irresponsibly set

To demonstrate to us

Who remains in control.

Just think how Colinford Mattis

And Urooj Rahman have fared,

Falsely arrested in Brooklyn

For ‘disrespecting’ a cop car

Already burned out by others,

These two privileged-but-Black lawyers

Were hauled in like common vandals.

After completing bail hearings

For the hyped-up, unprovable

Vandalism charges, they were

Released on bond amounts fitting

To such inconsequential ‘crime.’

Then, after being home, a “judge” –

So-called, ‘cause a Trump appointee –

Had them arrested again, and

Held over for trial without bail.

Say their names: Colinford Mattis

And Urooj Rahman still rotting

In a New York city jail today.

 

Harum-Scarum backlash . . .

 

Say the name of Terron J. Boone,

Cop-killed less than two weeks after

His brother Robert Fuller was

Hanged on a tree outside L.A. –

Coincidence L.A. sheriffs

Would just happen to go looking

For a lynching victim’s family

To make further “example” of?

Of course, conveniently for them,

Their body cameras were turned off,

So it’s their word of what happened

Against that of a dead man. Nice.

 

Harum-Scarum backlash . . .

 

Or Helter Skelter scheme –

Have boogie-woogie days

And cop nights of “slaughter”

Been happening all along,

To prove who’s in control?

 

 

^_