Acquitted

Written in memory of Amadou Diallo after the acquittal of the four police officers who shot at him 41 times killing him outside of his apartment in New York City on February 4, 1999.)

Bang Bang Bang

Four cops
One innocent man
Shouldn’t pose a problem

Bang Bang Bang

More precisely
Four white cops
One Black man
In this case
Innocence is but a detail

Bang Bang Bang

What passes through their
Minds as they
Stop
To reload?
As bullets fly with
Controlled precision
Ripping through flesh
Tearing through membranes
Dismantling organs
Exploding blood vessels
Sending systems into shock…
Does blood then splatter and stretch moist
Across shiny black boots?

Bang Bang

11 shots later
He likely no longer poses a threat
To police officers so
What triggers them to keep firing?
Centuries of familiarity
Ancestors’ memories
Comforting knowledge of a history of acquittals
Won
When Black families sought white justice
In courtrooms built on the backs of Black blood
Where victims are virtuously white
And scapegoats systematically Black?

Bang Bang Bang

By now a callous must have formed
To provide protection for the sensitive skin
Between the two joints of the
Index trigger finger
But how thick must the
Callous covering common sense
Be to permit the continuous shooting
Of a corpse?

Bang Bang Bang

Chalk it up to experience
Live target practice training
And they do practice, even on royalty
Rodney King
Took a beating
And sang the “Can’t we all get along”
Non-violent peace sit-in song
Not heading that others before he
With similar philosophies received
The same
Royal treatment
Martin Luther King Jr
Dreamt dreams of equal splendor
And was later reduced
To more…
Target practice

Bang Bang Bang

He’s reaching for a

Bang

Oops
Thought it was a gun
Didn’t think it was a wallet
How many Black men have been murdered
While reaching for their identification
When their relevant ID
Was already written all over
Their skin?
He appeared suspicious
To men who peer suspiciously
At all that is Black

Bang Bang Bang

And that’s only 24 shots
How do they sound as they resonate through space
Suspending time
Suspending humanity?
Would it be like the
Ring-ing
Of school bells
Of church bells
Of delighted wedding bells?
Or like the ringing
Bellows of overseers
Slow southern drawl of massa
The ringing sting of fresh lashes
Lacing taught over stretched, stressed skin?
Or the eerily calm ring-ing of a flat line?

Bang Bang Bang

Sweet genocide

Bang Bang

Yoruba, turn African, turn savage
Turn monkey turn nigga, turn field nigga
Turn house nigga, turn colored, turn negro
Turn pc to Black, African-American
Afro-Canadian, of the African diaspora…

Bang Bang Bang

Still a nigga

Bang Bang Bang

In the eyes of the gun-totting
‘White privilege system’ upholding
Lynching, pummeling, beating
Harassing, raping
Nigga killers

Bang Bang Bang

38

Is the rhythm now nice and slow?
Perhaps it’s time to relax
Ahhhhhhh
Stretch index trigger finger and reposition
At exactly what point does
Self-defense become pre-meditated?
And tragic accidents calculated?

Bang

39

Number could have been divine intervention
Depending on interpretation
Because more likely than not
These four murdering cops
Have done time
On their knees praying
‘But deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom
The power and the glory forever
And ever Amen.’
God-fearing men
Armed with God killing tools

Bang

The smell of
Fresh blood
Empty bowls
Salty piss
Rigor mortis
What exactly does a really dead nigga smell like?

Bang

(Sniff)
Curiosity satisfied

Twenty-two-year-old Amadou Diallo
Shot at forty-one times by the police officers
Rest in peace