Ferguson

my beautiful black people

Hope Lynn Murphy Hoover "Old Black Lady" 1986

we could right now be in our springtime

we could be spinning magic from starlight

making love with sunshine

could be dancing on the Moon and Mars,

mapping Venus

mining Saturn

could be up

several clouds above this life

standing high

we could be shining

we could be at the end of our long hot summer here

in America

but nigga

instead we here dealing with this bullshit

we in August

and it’s hotter than ever

niggas is getting dropped

deader than flies

po animals

got more rights than us

1415-”When yall first started fucking with us”

1619-“Dragged us to this side coz yall was greedy and lazy”

1700’s-”White folks, stealing and killing”

1865-”Fought a whole war just so you could hold people in slavery”

1965-”Hundred years after the war, we still fighting yall so we can live free”

2014-”yep still fighting”

Dred Scott

no rights which a white man is bound to respect

So I know

we in this alone

aint got no choice

but to ride or die

because it seem

we just gon die anyway

finna drop any day

cops, night watchmen, old dudes

whoever

kill niggas

like flies

in Ferguson

no rights