a cop wanders onto my porch lost after an accident looking for directions he knocks someone shoots him in the face before asking who’s there his body full of double barrel blasted falls sloppy on the steps a sheriff calls me in a frenzy someone is trying to break into his home. sheriff warns that he is carrying, legally. i arrive minutes later someone shoots the sheriff twice in the torso then demands he drop the weapon an officer speeds past me on the highway i catch him at the next light after the exit someone drags him out of the passenger side window wraps a strong arm around his throat exasperated he cries i can’t - a captain is shopping in target in the toy section no one calls me but i show up ready sneak up behind the captain and someone slides a taser under the left side of his jaw he grabs for relief but the current don’t let go until he does and he lays there while the rest of us go on about our business a sergeant or a pig or a squad of police congregate on the suspicious side of a park i pull up and empty three magazines into every uniform in sight before commanding stillness over their lifeless lumped bodies i love my people. i protect and serve my people. i’ll die to neutralize any threat to my people. i’m a good soldier. i’m a tired militant. i’m an angry poet. i’m a fed up nigga. i’m an angry nigga fed up with poems. i been tired before so i must be dead by now. i been sick so i must be immune by now. what’s black life in a murder machine?
Civil Rights Activist Robert F Williams and his wife, Mabel Ola Robinson, training with guns gifted to them by Fidel Castro. 1962.
a poem in which we shoot back
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