This is a poem a friend of mine in Ohio posted on FB yesterday. I asked her for permission to share it, as I think it’s powerful. Hope you get out of it as much as I did.
Eric Garner & George Floyd in Heaven, Before Their Black Police Victim Grief Support Group Meeting
“Hey, man.”
“Hey.”
“Nice to meet you…Well, you know what I mean.”
“I got you.”
“Philando brought you to the meeting?”
“Yeah. You know. We both from Minnesota.”
“Yeah. It’s nice to have somebody from home you can hang with… Well, you know what I mean.”
“I got you.”
“You from New York, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You must got a ton of homies up here.”
“My daughter is up here, man.”
“Oh…yeah…that’s right.”
“Yeah, man.”
“My bad…I ain’t mean….”
“It’s all right, man. You ain’t do it.”
“It’s crazy, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“I always thought about dying, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“I always knew the time would come, and I would have to go.”
“Yup. It’s the way it is.”
“I just…I never wanted one of them to be what took me out.”
“I hear you.”
“It’s fucked up.”
“Beyond.”
“You born with the white man’s knee on your neck. You die with his knee on your neck.”
“With his stick at your throat.”
“You walk around scared of your own skin and your own bones – how Goddamn breakable they are.”
“Like you toothpicks and tissue.”
“You live a whole life and never get to fucking breathe freely.”
“And then you get here and…”
“It’s better?”
“You’re safer. No more body, no more beating.”
“But?”
“Angels ain’t omnipotent, you know? We can’t do shit but put the thought into the person’s head.”
“So we gotta do it. We gotta do it, man. We gotta get them to stand up. We gotta get them to fight for it.”
“For ‘it’?”
“Freedom. They say they want it. They gotta get off they ass then.”
(c) Michelle R. Smith 2020
Systems Savvy 
Leave a Reply