By: Kyle Ocampo Magro
There you stand like the green soldier of a rusted Confederate statue
claiming you are prepared to lay your life for the lives that pass you.
On your chest you proudly wear a gilded badge with shades of gold,
but there is nothing in the cage that remains below.
Your crusade was a calling of a noble goal,
a predisposed duty to defend,
but the power in that word was a different sin.
In the novel of the beat, protecting the public was a weak work of fiction,
and some colors remained not under your jurisdiction.
On your black leather waist is a weapon,
one that you have held with a murderous intention.
And in your mind, you made it where
where that boy deserves death and not a chance to finish his sentence.
Officer of the binding law,
you are the jury with probable cause,
so, you become the judge of lives and loss.
There is no need to consult above,
like an orange candlelight ready to snuff,
your black conscience decides that the evidence is enough.
Movement to clear your black weapon’s rust,
the boy stares at you with white eyes of angel dust.
You unholster your weapon,
and you prepare to send a soul to a silver heaven.
There is that familiar sound,
and the yellow brass casing that hits the ground.
So, down the block from Madison Park,
where your squad car was parked,
was the body you failed to spare,
and in your mind, he made it where
where his family was made to tear.
In a grey room he spends his share,
Family on brown wooden chairs,
But in their minds, he made it where,
His red heart no longer beat unlike yours underneath that blue uniform.
His lifeless body of that faded blue became like the fabric that covers the red demon inside you.
And down the block from Madison Park,
there the white candles sit on the street,
but they could never bring the boy back to his feet.
And down the block from Madison Park,
he travels in a hearse within a black coffin bound for the church
and there they immortalized him with a couple of words.
Protestors like soldiers move to march,
no justice for lost life as you have dodged your charge.
Blue heart,
black heart,
you could not empathize with the family you scar.
And in the ashes that remind them of the remains too charred,
the pain will never allow them to forget the memories you marred.
Today, you are reminded of the blue words of prejudice within you.
Tomorrow, you teach it to your children and the cycle continues.