Short Film

Lyrics

SHORT FILM i. not an elegy for Trayvon Martin the rain has come, thus somewhere a dead thing is being washed away. This time, they've named it a black boy. This time, every time, same difference. What a great, sad thought he is, this dead boy clutching tight to sweetness. How long does it take a story to become a legend? How long before a legend becomes a god or forgotten? Ask the river what it was like when it was rain then ask it who it drowned. ii. not an elegy for Renisha McBride but an ode to whoever did her hair & rubbed the last oil into her cold scalp or a myth the bullet & the red yolk it hungers to show her or the tale his hands, pale & washed in shadow for they finished what the car could not. if I must call this her faith, I call God my enemy. iii. not an elegy for Mike Brown I am sick of writing this poem but bring the boy. his new name his same old body. ordinary, black dead thing. bring him & we will mourn until we forget what we are mourning & isn't that what being black is about? not the joy of it, but the feeling you get when you are looking at your child, turn your head, then, poof, no more child. that feeling. that's black. \\ think: once, a white girl was kidnapped & that's the Trojan war. later, up the block, Troy got shot & that was Tuesday. are we not worthy of a city of ash? of 1000 ships launched because we are missed? always, something deserves to be burned. it's never the right thing. I demand a war to bring the dead boy back no matter what his name is this time. I at least demand a song. a song will do for now. \\ look at what the lord has made. above Missouri, sweet smoke. iv. who has time for joy? another week, another boy dead because he's black & soon more will wade into after without a name or questionable photo on the local news. how do you expect me to dance when everyday someone who looks like everyone I love is in a gun fight armed only with skin? look closely & you'll find a funeral frothing in the corners of my mouth, my mouth hungry for a prayer to make it all a lie. reader, what does it feel like to be safe? how does it feel to dance when you're not dancing away the ghost? how does joy taste when it's not followed by will come in the morning? reader, it's morning again & somewhere, a mother is pulling her hands across her boy's cold shoulders kissing what's left of his face. where is her joy? what's she to do with a son who'll spoil soon? & what of the boy? what was his last dream? who sang to him while the world closed into dust? what cure marker did we just kill? what legend did we deny his legend? I have no more room for grief for it us everywhere now. listen. listen to my laugh & if you pay attention you'll hear his wake. \\ prediction: the cop will walk free the boy will still be dead \\ every night I pray to my God for ashes I pray to my God for ashes to begin again my God, for ashes, to begin again I'd give my tongue to begin again I'd give my tongue a cop's tongue too v. not an elegy for Brandon Zachery a boy I was a boy with took his own life right out his own hands. I forgot black boys leave that way too I have no words that bring him back, I am not magic. I've tried, but I am just flesh, just blood yet to spill. People at the funeral wondered what made him do it. People said he saw something. I think that's it. he saw something what? the world? a road?         a river saying his name? trees? a pair of ivory hands?         his reflection? his son's? vi. hand me down all my uncles are veterans of the war but most of them just call it blackness. all their music sounds like gospel from a gun's mouth. I gather the blues must be named after the last bit of flame licking what used to be a pew or a girl. I wish our skin didn't come with causalities, I can't imagine a sidewalk without blood. // when the men went off to fight each other, the women stood in the kitchen making dinner for white folks. (no one said the kitchen was theirs. no one said their children didn't thin then disappear altogether.) // so not all the women worked keeping someone else's house in order. my great grandmother owned her block a shop where she sold fatback & taffy, ran numbers. I imagine that little stretch of St. Louis as a kingdom, a church, a safe house made of ox tails & pork rinds a place to come to be black & not dead. // eventually, all black people die. I believe when a person dies the black lives on.