I Can't Breathe

I Can't Breathe

November ‘63; a bullet explodes

Filled with bad odes

Blood fills a titular head -

A frame too sad.

The news freezes all

And too, I can’t breathe.

Cities implode into a churn

As the song pleads, "burn, baby, burn!".

The dogs growl at the bridge

And police hold the ridge

Against a minister’s prayer call

Of a dream where all can breathe.

Brother Robert teaches hope

And then, an LA interlope

Stills Camelot’s last gasp.

Another favorite son will lapse

And, the Summer of Love will fall;

Napalm is in the air; we can’t breathe.

Young men drafted - abide

The country's outrageous ride

Into a false war's reason;

Soon, too many sons lost to a country's treason.

Students shot at campus mall;

She cried “he can’t breathe!”.

In a faraway place of ancient origins

Revolution is in the air against Americans.

Iranian students despise Western ways

Holding embassy hostages in secret stays

Insisting for a Shah’s royal pall

As the clerics claim, “We may soon breathe”

A man lurking about at the Dakota.

Imagine - John ending a sixties’ coda?

In Houston, one good heart replaces a failing one.

In LA, Rodney is beaten and killed by justice’s wand.

In Texas, David takes seventy-five into fires enthrall.

Poets and songwriters tell of a turgid air - we can’t breathe.

A quiet September morning sit two towers

As the life of a city awakens to last hours

Before hate strikes at the twin emblems of the free

And suddenly - their collapse kills all lost in flee!

Mongers of fear bite at the nation’s throat with deadly appall;

The ribs of the towers swirl with toxicity; no one can breathe.

Three men of justice stand on a man’s neck.

Perry pleads for his life not to be taken in check

And, his black color assures that he will never be set free

From the knee of injustice; and he pleads for his momma to see.

What is one more life when black is the voice that calls?

“I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe”  -  And now, we gather to breathe.