When I grow up, I'll be free, dead, or a violent protester.

You killed my cousin 1000 times this year.

You killed them

almost 1000 times

last year

little less

than the year before.

You call it progress.

Praise god,

wherever they’ve gone,

for body cameras

for surveillance of slayed

black family.

Praise god for hiding behind his desk

praise god for the cuomos and pelosis

in godly image

selling out black people

in the midst of colonizing them.

My moms told me: stay safe

wear a tie, cut your dreads

use reading language

“Don't be another”

lost brother, sister, sibling, relative

that I’ve never met. They are gone. I never will.

I won’t be safe with a lost self

behind a bald head

exposing me to

elements of social

abuse and capitalism’s manipulation.

Non-existent respect

never saved a soul.

Degrees aren’t vests...

in fact, separation from me

doesn’t seem like freedom.

Just a locked room

occupied by a mix of me and dust.

While ideology and systems

are bullets and battering rams.

Since I decided to live in suicide

by being black, deciding to live at all,

then maybe with my last breathe

I’ll shoot and ask

What progress is there for my cousin

in a reformed graveyard?

when the deads’ bodies

live cold as their lives?

Where grass is grown from salty tears

while the air is uninterested.

Perhaps I’ll suggest

There’s more solace in heat

that ravishes desks and departments.

That there’s warmth

budding from embers in what is after.