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.
