by Anu Vazkaela

To not be quiet

Means sacrificing the means of justice for peace

But that is not what the people want

They want to be kept

Quiet

Sullenly still

For the sake of peacekeeping

We can only have justice after we have peace but that is false

Peace is the process of smoothing

Or quieting

Or deliberately silencing the pain

The cries and wails

In voices that come from behind the prison walls

We have built in front of our eardrums

Justice is a little pinprick in that silence

And a sigh escapes

From that bloody running fabric

We so easily turn from

And then another prick of a needle

Or a bullet that hit Michael Brown

And his mother’s cries deep through

But we just dig that wall deeper

Higher Patch over the prison breaks with our words of micro-aggressing comfort

And then the wall shifts

Because the hands behind it are pushing

Reaching

Expanding it

And the handprints recede from the smack

Of a policeman’s baton

But they keep going

Through the bruises and bullet wounds

Riots are for the people

America, was founded on the colonists throwing tea bags into a river

That is petty

Then they say we need to not riot

We sit quiet and talk

We ask for equality

They give us more dead bodies and revoke laws

Meant to shield us

We protest, with peaceful signs

The only assault is one their eardrums

And they call us violent

Beat us

Say we need to protest another way

They do not want us to protest

They do not want us to be asking or demanding or rioting

They don’t want US But US is the US of A

We are the fabric of the country

You claim to love

The flag you demand we respect

Even though that flag has never respected us

Only been the excuse to kill us

Beat us

Take away our rights as humans

And you still think that you can bend us to your white will

I’m so tired of being quiet so that everyone gets along

I’m so tired of being liberal and letting someone have that opinion

When that idea is the answer to the argument for my oppression

I will raise hell now

For that is all you have given me

It’s time to

Let you have a taste of your own medicine