Sometimes, I am in love with myself.
I force them to witness my love for my melanin
because they would love for me to hate my melanin.
I know that I am seen, but I want to be heard, 
The first amendment allows me to speak, but they refused to hear a word-
that comes from my mouth.
My lips stereotyped as too black.
My diction too proper to act like this,
yet my slang is too ghetto to act like that...
Sometimes, I wonder what it's like to be white.
I hate being stared at when I speak in Spanish.
I never know if it's in disgust or in comfort, 
because the sound of the double "r" rolling off of my tongue
sounds like the ricochet of the bullets they fire from their guns.
Since they no longer can enslave us like animals, they slaughter us
because, "if I can't have you no one can."
I refuse to be put down.
I refuse to shutdown.
My brown skin threatens,
and you all should be afraid.
Because I will banish your negativity with my Latin American flow,
speaking in Spanish with the Bachata tempo filling my veins.
My Ebonics is iconic, 
and I refuse to be put in a box when the world is a sphere.

I... am more... than this.

A new town, a new place,
Every day we see them.
They are a blessing and a curse,
To bless us with death.

They're everywhere, they live among us,
And we love them so.
Point your fingers at the tools,
Point the barrels at yourselves,
It all makes sense in our twisted world.

Call 'em blind, call 'em slaves,
We're all the same.
Clones who can't see the raw  truth,
Without a coat of sweet lies.

Sky blue lies,
But the truth runs red,
Like the blood you soak in.

Let's play a game of Russian roulette,
I'll load the gun and you place the bets.
Who the **** will make it out?
Who has to die next?

Your standards have not changed in a changing world,
Tradition has been ***** of all reason.
So set flame the number two excuse,
Forever engraved in depravity.
How can they **** us without us?
We send each other to the slaughter.
Man turns on man, child turns to killer,
Isolation becomes the evil, and reason is retribution.

So let's play that of Russian roulette,
I'll load a few guns, you call those risky bets.
How many dead bodies equals logic?
How much longer can we do this?

I
The phone was screaming in my pocket
its voice was muffled by the pile of clothes
on top of it

The hotel water was almost too hot
it blushed my scalp
and cascaded down my face
in a way that should have felt like baptism
but didn't

After what felt like an eternity
the call went to the black hole
that is my neglected voicemail
now at over a hundred missed calls

I didn’t want to talk
not to Dad, not to Mom,
not to my fiancé,
and definitely not to some reporter
trying to make our ****** up family
the topic of the nine o’clock news

II
The pipes in the wall
clunked around for a second
as I turned the ****, cutting the water off
I stepped out of the shower
somehow feeling less clean than when I entered

For a moment I stood there,
towel over my head
in complete darkness

I closed my eyes and saw him
standing across from me
his eyes, locked with mine
dad’s gun in his shaking hands -
pointed directly at my head
unblinking, full of hatred, anger
and fear

They’ll call him a monster
and knowing what he’s done,
I won’t be able to say they’re wrong

III
Sympathizers will say that the divorce
messed him up somehow
or that he inherited our mother’s mental illness
or that he played too many first person shooters –
which is just ******* stupid

Lying on the hotel bed,
I nakedly examined the ceiling
mapping out the distance between water stains
like a cartographer

The last time he called me
he was in tears,
because some ****** from his school
beat him to a pulp
and shoved his face in dog ****

I can’t help but dwell
on something I said to him that night:

“People like that don’t change
they become ******* adults
and keep kicking people around
because they can
Because they’re rich and we’re poor
and they don’t want to see people like us
we remind them that the world isn't perfect
and doesn't revolve around them”

I don’t want to believe
that I planted the seed,
that the one time he listened to me –

IV
Six people died
most of them, kids no older than seventeen
one teacher, and a janitor - tagged by a stray bullet
two kids have been in critical condition
for the last three days

He must have been terrified
in those last moments
before the cops riddled him with holes

He must have regretted it
or at least regretted
not having an escape plan

He never did think things through
unlike me,
connecting the countries on the ceiling
drawing imaginary lines
of cause and effect
and trying to figure out what it means
to be a big brother
in the absence of a little one

Killing field in the city streets
Another drive by as people sleep

Shots echo through the dead of silence
Chaos breed victims, they breed violence

Tags on the bricks, signs on the walls
Put down your gun, bring it to call

Red and blues flashes, a moment too late
Stop the violence, it's not our fate