‘A bouquet of humanity.’
– Jerry Blackwell
The youngest among the crowd
that day was nine
On her way to that very store
to buy snacks
Walking with her cousin, who
was twelve that day
“Get off of him!” said the younger
girl, with plaintive scowl
She said it more than once.
The store clerk was a boy of
eighteen, and would’ve
sold the girls their snacks
had not fate intervened
He now bears guilt not
in any way his
just because he made
the call that brought the cops
The same cops told by
the little girl that they were hurting
the man on the pavement
“Get off of him!” said the younger
girl, with sterner scowl
She said it more than once.
Just like the woman who stopped
on her way to work in a
community garden, on her day off
from her paramedic job
she offered to help the man
while echoing the little girl’s plea.
She said it more than once.
Others gathered on that
neighborhood curb, showing
neighborhood concern for
the man on the pavement
saying he couldn’t breathe as
a different man, lacking any sense
of community, of humanity
kneeled on the gasping man’s neck
“He can’t breathe!”
“Get off of him!”
“You need to let him up!”
“He says he can’t breathe!”
They said it more than once.
But the man with his knee on the
neck of the man the community saw
in their community, on their street
standing on their curb, now yelling at
the indifferent man with his knee on
a neck, his hand in his pocket
like he was waiting for a bus at that
very bus stop – a bus he would
not be caught dead riding because
it didn’t go where he wanted to be
because people on those buses were
of a neighborhood not his
a neighborhood far from his
both in geography and in being
They said it more than once.
The little girl, her cousin, the paramedic
the retired man out for a stroll
the other guy who just happened by
And the teenaged girl who had presence
and a phone
and who filmed the whole thing
and the video found its way to every
nook and cranny of the globe
and millions of people in thousands
of other neighborhoods
took to their streets, their sidewalks
their own curbs, bus stops, corner stores
and they said the man with his knee
should’ve gotten up
should’ve let the other man breathe
should’ve helped the man when he
stopped breathing
They said it more than once.
We know this, because a young woman
recorded it all, shared it with the world
shared the truth of what happens
far too often on far too many city streets
They showed it more than once.
And now everybody knows that
the little girl was right, and knows
so much more than she did that day
when she said to the man with his
hand in his pocket: “Get off of him!”
And so does her cousin.
And do does the boy who worked in
the store and feels the pain
of that day as does the paramedic and
the retired man, and the others who
stopped that day, tried to stop what
they were seeing, tried to save a man
they did not know, from a man they
also did not know, but whose actions
changed all of their lives
changed all of our lives
They said it more than once.
Then they said it one more time.
In a courtroom, for all the world to hear
Lousy, clearly, directly.
They say they are not heroes
because they couldn’t stop it
but in stating for the record
what they saw, what they tried to do
reaffirming what the video showed
reinforcing what their community has
long known, what most of us ignored
In the end, one of the men who
prosecuted the man with the knee
on the neck of the neighborhood
praised the people on the curb –
‘A bouquet of humanity’
They are a bouquet
perpetually in bloom, never to wilt
forever vibrant with the hues of
justice, truth, and courage
They said it more than once.
They said it one more time and
the world, finally, listened.
– Mark L. Lucker
© 2021
Ponderable polemics, poetic 