As I Live and Breathe
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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