Screams and shouts, full of hate
“To once again make America great”
“Don’t forget all lives matter” are the cries.
How can we believe that when every 10 minutes a child in Yemen dies?
How can we believe that when White men can get what they want when they throw rages.
As immigrant kids sit in cages
Even though there is one house burning you wish us to quench them all?
Black lives matter is simply what we call.
Oh you believe Blue lives matter?
Blue matters when it flashes with red over a black body who couldn’t Breath, What’s the matter?
Are you uncomfortable when there are riots on the streets?
What do you not understand about no justice no peace.
“Go back to your country!”
Who the hell do you think brought them here?
Stripped of rights and freedom with dreams and hope nowhere near.
I wonder if the cops can say the names of the sons and daughters they
Strangled and shot.
As years go by, and, in school no one is taught,
Of the systemic racism right below the surface.
We must educate ourselves and put free speech to purpose.
And so we begin to speak up and fight!
A new generation who believes equality is right!
You can either stand in our midst,
Or we will fight against this injustice until you are bound at the wrists.
We need racist cops in jail.
And innocent black lives let off of bail.
Just because I was born with lighter skin,
I will never know how it feels to be drowning in oppression, unable to fight For my kin.
They watch the same silenced story,
A White police killing a minority.
Over and over they must stay quiet, so they don’t die too.
But every time another falls the pain is always new.
Change is churning as we speak.
Dead bodies hidden for so long that they have finally begun to reek.
Fifteen-year-old Maya Menconi lives in Carbondale and attended a Juneteenth event in Rifle. She wrote this afterwards. Dead bodies hidden for so long that they have finally begun to reek.
