Black Lives
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Dickens said that the law is an ass. Perhaps it was in his day. Today it is more of a chameleon in ass skin. Welcome to the age of tailor-made justice.
When a man stepped out his childhood home,
Planting a brave foot in the open world
Not an age, not a generation, not a world ago,
There breathed and burned in him hope
Shared with mama's receding figure
Frozen in prayer by the doorpost to his back
That his way he would make through this mild wild
That law and claw both make the world
With flesh unmarred by scratch or patch.
"You'll keep out of trouble if you behave yourself,"
she would advise.
That, sure, was the wisdom of her world,
Her old world now long gone,
When the law was still a genuine ass,
Not a chameleon in ass skin
That turns deathly black when around blacks
And pristine white when around whites.
Black or white, all will rue the loss of that world
When a man was safe if he behaved himself.
Now he keeps out of trouble
Only if he behaves himself,
The police behave themselves,
And court behaves itself.
Copyright © Agona Apell | Year Posted 2017
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