Sadistic sociopath
Streets and alleys bleed
across my adopted country
The Black man can't breathe

Centuries of slavery
make the blood run
bouncing over jagged rocks
I feel its legacy
in every Black pulse
people now assumed free
The rough run of fluid in veins
traumatized for generations

My Appalachian heart
distilled in the North country,
running from the violence
nurtured on Assassin's Hill
A successful white immigrant
brought down by comorbidities
of profound injury

My pulse is choppy too,
the imprint of torture and murder
resonating in the flow

One American son moving
corporate mountains
to heal the heritage of
Satanists and Nazis

The other hand in hand
with his love,
where I could not be,
wearing a gas mask,
shot by rubber bullets,
no lost eyes
Left his gun at home
and walked peacefully through
the hemorrhaging streets because he is a…