Don’t listen
To the names they call you,
And when they watch you
From across the street,
Softly singing the bitter melodies
Of a broken generation
Don’t listen.

The click of a .45, sirens wailing,
lights flashing black bodies
Bleeding on the sidewalk
Don’t look;
(At least, that’s what they told us)

And the mother crying
Over another dead baby
In the gutter,
And the screeching voices
Begging for mercy
From a barrage of tear gas
Pepper spray batons
Begins to sound like
A broken record.

And the fragmented images
Of children,
Cold helpless lost wandering
alone in the dark,
Left to rot under
Blue and red headlights
Begin to look the same.

So many bodies pile up
People lose track,
Desensitized to cheap violence
Institutional racism gun wielding
Men in uniform.

Another life taken
By suppressed hatred
But no one cares anymore

Because the ignorance
Of a broken generation
Born of remains
From our parents’ discrimination
Slavery segregation

And a long line of
Hateful propaganda
Is fought with  an endless
Cycle of empty rhetoric.

We hear,
But do not listen.
We Look,
But do not see past
the rolling newsreels
Buzzfeed headlines,
quick words,
Cut to ending.

Because who wants
To acknowledge a
broken legal prison
education justice system
political machine
Built on false promises
Of life, liberty
And the pursuit of happiness.

The next time
You watch a child
Being beaten in the streets,
And hear his mother’s
Sobs echoing the cries
Of one hundred
Before her,
Look.
Listen.