TWO OPTIONS (For Sandra and Kindra and Natasha and Renisha and…)

Because it’s way too hard to keep writing the same think pieces and essays over and over again. Saying the same thing over and over again. To the same people over and over again. Because my heart aches and my soul is tired. Because I know God is not pleased with what some have wrought and what all of us have allowed. Because I imagine that God is waiting for someone to turn over some proverbial (actual?) tables at the injustices that are finally being seen by the masses. Because of all of this, I’ve written a poem.

TWO OPTIONS (For Sandra and Kindra and Renisha and Natasha and…)

She is me.
With her sorority and degrees.
With her passionate pleas
for justice.

But for God’s grace, there go I.
And how many times have I
turned right on red
when it wasn’t right?
How many times have I
missed a signal
or a sign?
Should I resign
that these errors warrant my execution?

I pray not.

And yet she, beautiful and brown,
somebody’s child
is dead.

Her bright, hope-filled smile
celebrating another win.
A win she’d never really see.
Because her wind
was cut off and hung up

Strung up?

“Black bodies swinging…”
Billie is singing,
again.

I want to understand.
To make sense of each tragedy.
Find a true “had to be.”
Find a reason or rhyme
for hate so deep.
For fear so embedded that
even the perpetrators can’t find
the starting point.

But we know.
We have always known.
We have lived our days
under the gaze
of the next haze.
Will it be my brother today?
Or my sister?
Or my child?
Or me?

America’s original sin
for which she refuses to turn
and therefore, will continue to burn
with a reaping that never ceases.
She may shift and cover up,
She may render and shade,
but she never really releases.

But the reckoning is coming
as all reckoning does.
Retribution is near.
Hear us!
Be very clear!

Since decades of marching
and racial reconciliation pursuits,
still seem to only bear the strangest of fruit.
It will likely come down to something else.
Something no one really wants at all.
But no one seems to want to prevent.

Two options: Reap or Repent.

Hear the cries!

Watch the rage rise!

Repent for Sandy and Kindra and Renisha and Eric and…

Or reap for them all.

© 2015 – Tracey M. Lewis-Giggetts