ONE MILE TO DEATH BY POLICEMAN

(Poem 30 of 365)

ONE MILE TO DEATH BY POLICEMAN

I have a box of German chocolate cake mix I need to mix right now.

My oven has already preheated to the proper heat to allow.

A quick check in the refrigerator door...

I am out of eggs, so I need a quick drive to the store.

And, as usual, I will pick up some additional chow.

But before I walk out my front door, over across the floor...

As always, I leave a little note under the magnet on the refrigerator door.

The note is profound...

The reason is very lowdown...

For you see, I am a black man and I might now survive the drive I abhor.

For you see, they are killing black men for sport on the American streets!

These murderers are policemen so racist they don't even wear sheets!

They pull us over for the hell of it...

Order us out of our cars from which we sit...

And then shoot us dead even as we plead for our lives, obsoletes.

The note I leave informs my family of why I might not be home!

The contents is as stoic and serious as the caption on a tomb! 

In short, If I am not home when you read this note...

Check the news to see if, there on the bloody street, is all I finally wrote...

Shot dead before, or after, I purchase my eggs.. in an unreasonable gunshot boom!

So here I go to make my half mile run through the gauntlet called the city.

I am so freaking afraid to drive the distance, it is a damn pity.

Will I be just another dead Negro laid out on the ground...

Filled with bullet lead from a trigger happy white policeman unsound?

Or, can I make it back home ALIVE... here's a prayer for God's pity!

RLJ