Angry black man

That’s what they call me

Hands up Don’t Shoot

But you still gun me down

With words we shouldn’t be using anymore

All you ever want to do is hurt me

Turning on the news to hopefully find something happy

But another brother gunned down

By That Police Officer

Or by that guy who wanted to start a race war

But yet my black identity is the “REAL THREAT”

Respectability politics don’t do anything for me

Though you neglect to tell me that

They don’t do anything for my kindred

They just shut me up once again

Sure, isn’t that what you want?

We still meet our end the same way

With a gun or a taser or whatever you want

Because you’re the one with the power

And I’m just a scary black man on my way home

Though you may see me as your lesser

I’m still going to love you as my family

As a human being

As a person whose life matters

Because all lives matter,

Or is that just the lives of your kin?

Dearest hunter, don’t you know

Even though you make me feel like I don’t deserve to be in the same world as you

And you’d rather send me to “The Big House”

Or gun me down

Or make me watch my partner die as you get away with

One murder too many

Because you would never admit that I’m a human being just like you

But yet you say we’re all human beings

And we all matter

But yet, you’re unwilling to admit the truth

that you constantly ignore our deaths

And your success is built on cries of “I can’t breathe”

And the last minute of life cries of another I’ll never see again

Is that how you get your high?

Are you having fun?

Is this what you’re getting paid to do?

Are you happy yet that the system benefits you

In ways that it oppresses me?

Are you happy

That I’ll never see my librarian again

And there’s a college boy that will never see his mother again

Because there was a man so hell bent on starting a race war

That he gunned down a church in the heart of the city

But yet he is cared for like a child

Brought fast food and given protection

Where’s the protection for us

Oppressed people killed day and night

Where is our protection

Riot cops in the streets and extra security called in

Just because white people are scared that black people have had enough

When will you have enough

How many bones do you have to break

How voices do you have to silence

And how many dead bodies must lie before you

Until you realized what you’ve done

And what the system has done

To you, to us, and to community

So, no, I as a black man cannot acknowledge your pain

When I might not see my brother again

And know that he will be just another hashtag

How many people have to die before you want to end the system

Beat the system

Tell the system that enough is enough

Because you finally see me as your brother

Not just as a scary black man

So until then

Until my life span is not overseen by a system with bullets upon bullets

To kill all of us

First us, then you

All of us

I cannot

I will not

I must not

Feel tears of sadness for the deaths of your kin

Sure, I’ll be an angry black man

Because how can I sleep at night

When I know that you

think the broken bones and midnight screams

Of another brother’s death is just a cry for attention

And some heinous overreaction

No! That’s not how this works!