A song for 1,000 shot

Genocide. Self-inflicted. Self-hatred. Raising killers from the cradle. Community devastated. Slipping into the abyss as we gently kiss casket-filled deaths of dreams forever young. Forever gone.

Whispering sweet lullabies, teary-eyed over life songs only half-sung. We sing. Cry. Moan. Long for an end to these tears and fears that overtake even the strong. And yet, we won’t do a damn thing to right this wrong. So with another bloody summer looming, I sing this song:

Little boy blue making summer mud pies. Little girls jumping rope, pigtails to the sky.

Never saw it coming. Never heard the bullets fly.

No time to cry before you closed your pretty brown eyes; No time to say goodbye.

So fly butterfly fly. Into the Father’s loving hands.

To a playground beyond these misty, water-colored skies. To a play lot of peaceful golden sands.

’Cause we didn’t give a damn. Wouldn’t even lift a hand. Couldn’t give a damn … Or you’d still be here instead. Impotent, the church runs and hides. Has swallowed her tongue. Stays walled inside.

She places on mute the people’s cries. So the people die.

Lie in streets filled with red that spills into urban gutters, and snakes through subterranean pipes that leech with the blood of young brothers. With the eternal agony and wail of mothers.

We utter platitudes and niceties in prolonged candy-wrapped eulogies amid this genocide at the hands of them who look like us.

Who leave us drowning in lakes of blood and salted tears that through the years have widened, deepened — seeped into our collective psyche and soul.

So that we now hear on night winds — if we listen with the spirit ear intently — the wail of former slaves, pleading intermittently: “How long this hell?”

Crying, “When will you arise to end this murderous swell?

“How many sons and daughters to placate this bloodlust of us by us?

“For how long from the grave must innocent blood cry? How many more need die?”

Amid the insanity — amid our “incapacity” — to end this self-inflicted plague, we have become socially emaciated. Materialistically intoxicated. Morally inebriated. Succumbing to politicians and the powers that be impure apologies. To preachers’ bittersweet homilies. Lured into believing we are powerless to steer our own destiny.

So with more than 1,000 people shot here already this year. With the spirit of murder tap dancing on the wind and in my ear

With knowing we won’t do a damn thing to right this wrong. With another bloody summer looming, I sing this song:

Don’t wanna go outside in the steel rain. Where bullets and gun smoke leave a mother with pain. An innocent life is snuffed in a second by a cold-hearted killer who never stopped to reckon. Not to pull the trigger, or to figure, that a child — meek and mild — might catch your aim.

What a shame. Oh, the pain. Tell me, who you gonna blame? You just took out a doctor to be. What a catastrophe. Or are you too blind to see? That young Marcus could have been a lawyer or a teacher. Now, Marcus needs a preacher.

Another dies. A mother cries. Another sighs. As the hearse rolls by. That ain’t life in the ghetto. Madness! And death brings sadness.

But it’s tick-tock, the gun’s cocked, a body drops. Another ghetto kid gets shot. Don’t wanna go outside and play. They might steal my life away.

We must now end this genocide. Selfhatred. Raising killers from the cradle.

The only question is not whether we are able. But do we give a damn to stop this mayhem?

But it’s tick-tock, the gun’s cocked, a body drops. Another ghetto kid gets shot. Don’t wanna go outside and play. They might steal my life away.