Requiem For Alonzo The Human Toll of Police Brutality
[Music]
when the american dream
does right by the oppressed it is the
only time that it truly exists
the founding documents of this country
are fundamentally humanistic
racism is inhumane the dream and the
nightmare
cannot coexist and when they’ve tried
historically
black voices have issued the wake-up
calls the vice of bigotry
has weakened this country since the very
beginning and thomas jefferson knew this
he even suspected that it could one day
doom the very soul of this country
in fact jefferson feared that white
children witnessing their parents
beating their slaves
would erode the moral fiber of america
and warp the lens through which we view
human life if their life came in a
different color in his letter
notes on the state of virginia jefferson
writes if a parent can find no motive
either in their philanthropy or
self-love
for restraining the intemperance of
passion towards their slave
it should always be a sufficient one
that the child is present
now let’s be honest jefferson understood
this from first-hand experience
he then goes on to write i tremble for
this country
when i reflect that god is just and that
his justice cannot sleep forever
well 50 years after the civil rights
movement the cry for justice calls again
three simple words black lives
matter not matter more than any other
life
but matter at all the organization of
black lives matter is dwarfed in size
by the ethos embodied in these three
words
in fact it could be argued that black
lives matter has been the subtext
for every racial justice movement since
the time of jefferson himself
abolition was simply black lives matter
enough to be freed from chains
the civil rights movement was black
lives matter enough to be treated
equally
the black panther party stated that
black lives matter
enough to be defended by any means
necessary
can you hear us now then why has our cry
for help
been received as a battle cry could it
be that
the moral fiber of this country is so
eroded that it is now the warped
lens that jefferson feared if god is
just
then why can’t this country be even as
patriots invoke his name
during the pledge of allegiance and the
national anthem when some of us choose
to kneel
beneath the rhetoric and racial
narratives there are entire
human beings still waiting on the dream
to do right their lives
lost in the inhumane mythology of color
and the cultural consequences we’ve
artificially assigned to it
before they were hashtags and picket
signs and t-shirts
they were people this is the story of
one such person who’s dear to me
this is alonso alonzo’s birthday was the
day before mine so to make us feel
special
her moms made us share a cake he was a
kid who always used his
fingers for forks and the frosting for
spider-man face paint
well these days forks are no challenge
but birthdays are kind of hard for lonzo
see hasn’t had one since 2011. courtesy
of denver police
who snuffed the candles in his lungs
with the taser shock for every year
of his life that he breathed they said
that his strength was superhuman
like spiderman an altercation with a zoo
renter cop got out of hand
they treated the animals there more
humanely this black man
taking his last breath yards away from
african creatures and cages
and i know that there’s a metaphor in
there somewhere but all i remember
was his name on the news wondering why
some disturbance in the force hadn’t
warned me
wondering if the sound waves played
tricks on the air wondering if
he indeed just walked through heaven’s
gates why i wasn’t the one greeting him
there
see eight years before the denver police
handcuffed me to a chair
and beat me like i stole the tax dollars
i already paid them
my parents investment in me in their
crosshairs
every gas mile every meal every
storybook lesson
rests in the hands of uncle sam’s new
slave patrol weapons
but when the beast spit you out alive
buried in the sweat from the moments you
thought were the last before you died
who teaches you how to deal with
regretting survival
when the shame at a second chance got
you nearly suicidal alonzo
it should have been you writing this
poem and said i speak the ballad of
another dead soldier
and this war we didn’t ask for oldest
history’s pages
you and i african creatures born into
uniform doing life
in invisible cages this is the ballad of
another dead soldier
when the bullets kept going like the
families had to
and ricocheting off the tombstones i
keep his taste buds
in the graveyard that sings in my mouth
like i can somehow speak their alternate
futures into this one like
somewhere right now magically trayvon
martin is a model
all six foot three of us now chiseled
framed standing tall
like the pride of his mama beer game on
a honey like his daddy
clean like zimmerman’s hands had he just
followed
directions and somewhere oscar grant is
an actor alongside michael b
jordan never knowing that he’s staring
at his movie reflection
in fruitvale station is just another
train stop
and somewhere george floyd’s lungs never
paused for a moment of silence
his heart never called in black between
the beats instead he screamed
i can’t breathe from laughter that
christmas when his daughter
got licorice stuck in her teeth and
somewhere right now
sandra bland just received her first
non-profit grant
she and her fiance expect a child this
november all because a cop swallowed his
pride in a texas traffic stop
and the incident he barely remembers
these are the lives
and black lives matter the haters never
hear past the black
just get triggered from being awakened
from their raceless slumbers
content with real destinies reduced to
faceless numbers and somewhere
alonzo ashley made it out of that zoo
and eight years before
i tragically made it on to the news and
this poem
was never written and you’re not in
these seats just a candlelight vigil
held at my tomb
but for reasons i can’t name i survived
here to eulogize the fallen and i must
go on coping with the guilt
of being alive won’t you join me in
singing their songs
our voice is ringing out like the battle
of jericho
until the blue wall of silence falls
into the blue wall of silence
falls into the blue wall of silence
[Music]
falls
you