Darice Jones
“Y’all Be Tryin’ It”
Response
Our Turn
By Kathleen Finn Jordan
Inspiration piece
Say their names—you don’t know them
But the world is aghast;
As each death repeats
We hope it’s the last
From the depths of the slave ships
The cries on waves heave
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
So many marches, so many tries
So many tortured, so many died
Thousands protest—some steps toward a goal
But years of white privilege have taken their toll.
And now comes a moment when enough is enough
When platitudes, pardons and other small stuff
Have run out of meaning, run out of lives
Run out of mileage and people must rise.
Averting our gaze just won’t do anymore
Pretending to answer, revealed at its core
Being invisible—except to police
Receiving the taunts, and the dis with no peace.
Black Lives Matter and it must now be addressed
In housing, in jobs, in the courts—and the rest.
Each heart must listen and each head must grasp
The cost of injustice in present and past.
Now is the moment to join in, to see
To change what is broken, to honor, to plea.
Black Lives Matter demands our attention / respect
For years of abuse, overwhelming neglect
We’re all in a cage until everyone’s free
Injustice-by-system is injustice by ME.
Say their names—in each call out
Say their names as we grieve
Remember the chants on the waves as they heave
I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.
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