Hope.
For as long as we been on this soil HOPE has been dangled by ropes hanging from trees.
Hope has been the noose around our necks.
I hope they call you murderer as much as they call us niggers
I hope everytime someone coughs you suddenly can’t breath
And have to take a knee to catch your breath and it takes no less
Than 8 minutes and 46 seconds to not feel like death
I hope your children play with real guns
So you can feel how we feel when our kids play with toy ones
I hope every song you listen to has violin chords throughout the instrumental
So its instrumental in bringing back the clap of the trigger that triggers tenacious ripping reels
I hope it feels so real
The pain shoots through the skin on your back
I hope the black alley cats track your every move to remind you
I hope that one day you fear us like we feared you
And in the presence of our dark hues you take flight
Duck, dodge, dip, zag and zig the echos of bullets from your own gun
I hope you run
Like your life depends on it
I hope your life depends on it
And when you run you hit tall fences traced by barbed wire like Ahmad when he jogged and I hope when you yell for the guards
And when you yell for God
And when you yell for your mother
They fall silent and feel as helpless as George Floyd’s
MAMA!!!!
I hope our chants for the dead drown the cries for you alive
I hope no one sympathetizes
I hope your apologies are never accepted
I hope your color one day becomes a weapon
Who am I kidding
I hope when you eat skittles you never get to digest because they exit from a wound in your chest
I hope for policy changes
In heaven
And they make hate crimes equivalent to suicide and you have to ride the rest of your dead lives in hell with your brothers
I hope youre as scared of wearing your badge as we are afraid to wear our color
I hope Buddhism is apart of Gods Plan
And you come back as black attached to be destined to an attack by the power of a badge and the hate of your skin
I hope you’re pinned to ground
And a knee to your back as an officer feels the need to Grant you a bullet for being black
And I hope you make your departure but never make your train
I hope the city burns like California wildfires and the smog colors the sky Gray and everyone has to scream “I can’t breath”
I hope Freddie screams “how does it feel now” as he chooses to never rain dance on the clouds
I hope that before the Bell tolls for your wedding it tolls for your funeral and you never get to make a wife a widow
I hope the suns Rays Shards cut through your pigment and the dried Brooks of melanin leave your world colorless
I hope you go blind and black is the only color you get to see
I hope Sean Monterrosa is the preciding judge and he swings his hammer like a gavel decides your guilty without deliberation by a jury of your peers
I hope
Equality is hope
And hope is a fucking joke
Our murderers laugh at family gatherings
While our mothers sisters and brothers cry at funerals
The difference is
They can have a flurry
Of family gatherings
But there’s only so many kids we can bury
I know people who aren’t poets that use the word genocide to describe the times
But hope has been the nooses that kept us tied down or tied up
The crux
So fuck you and fuck hope
Sir! I’m going to need you to relax
Nah fuck that
Our hopes have only ended in more bullets and blood
That’s the only hope we’ve ever fucking gotten!
Sir! Bang!
Nooses hang.
Hope. Bangs.
Hope.
-Frederick Phillips