1- Black lives
shattered
like jackhammered rocks.
Blow by blow
the hammer
of revulsion—
scatters dreams
until
we become
ontological debris.
2- When music of the heart stops,
lights die from mothers’ eyes.
Their wails burrow
into folds of skin;
tears turned into oil
when candles of grief
burnt past their wicks.
In a land of dead black people
walking, their indignant souls
are incapable of watching
their own bodily death
like decomposing trolls.
3- The skin on
Jacob Blake’s back
was too black to be
considered human.
Seven bullets,
one for each deadly sin.
His body teeters
on the rim of death
as justice seeps
into a stream of sewage
where blackness
gasps for air.