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AS I LIVE AND BREATHE
by

Mary Grace Dembeck


As I live and breathe!

I turn on my TV, and I cannot

Believe what I watch:

A white police officer with his knee

Pressed on a black man's neck.

While the black man cries a plea.


And what's the black man's plea?

Simply: “I can't breathe!”

While, on his neck

The officer will not, cannot

Remove his knee

It gets so hard to watch!


And yet, I do watch,

Listen to the plea

As the officer's knee

Makes the black man so hard to breathe.

And he cannot

Move his tortured neck.


His poor, poor tortured neck.

Meanwhile 3 other cops just watch -

(How come they cannot,

Respond humanely to the black man's plea

Of “I can't breathe!”

While seeing the effects of that horrid knee?)


The cop, pressing his knee

Harder on the black man's neck,

Hears “I can't breathe!”

Cares not - continues to sullenly watch,

Shrugs off the gasping plea -

He doesn't care. I cannot.


Bear it anymore, yet I cannot

Take my eyes off that knee,

Close my ears to that plea

Watch that poor black man's neck

Collapse, and then I watch

The black man no longer breathe.


I turn off my TV, so that I cannot any longer see the black man's neck

Under the cop's knee, can no longer watch -

Nor hear the plea of “I can't breathe!”

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