Like dog shit we have scooped history

Into a trash bin

Like an accused witch we have

Burned it at the stake

Like a despised whore we have

Buried it at midnight

History will rise from its shallow grave

It will catapult from the closet

It will shout at us from every wall and rooftop

It will sit next to us on a dark sidewalk

When a young man with a gun follows another

Young man armed with junk food and life

History will be the judge when another verdict

Falls in line with two centuries of crosses and strange fruit

History will flood our veins and quicken our

Hearts at the site of injustice

History will lick our brains with its fire

So that there is more than delusion to fertilize

Our collective imagination

Tattoo these words into your retina

Wear them on your chest

Let them blind you from the blinking

Billboards of Times Square:

History’s hot breath tinged with those

Whose ground this once really was

Is breathing down the necks of all

Who “stand their ground”

And the rest of us, their accomplices,

Are carrying the full weight of the verdict

For the clear non-semantical criminality

Of our silence