Fear is a cycle.
Fear is two-sided.
Because fear
leads to violence,
and violence births tragedy,
and tragedy needs a victim,
and victims need an oppressor,
and oppressors need a justifiable reason dipped in half-baked facts, 
poor logic, enough examples of exceptions,
and suddenly, shit ain’t so simple.

They freeze inside, hoping, in their minds, 
that a pork-made cop will yell “freeze,” ensure compliance, and still fire
14 times,
you know, just to make sure.

Meanwhile, in the land of the living, 
I’m of the sound mind and reasonable opinion
that, in America, a peon with a badge 
is a lot scarier
than a boy with a black body.

So is it the chicken or the egg?
Whose ignorance struck first?
Was it when Mike Brown lifted three trucks as an infant?
Or when the Natives unwrapped the gift of pox from Caucasians?
Who was first dangerous?
If every picture I’ve ever seen colors Him pale 
with slavery-justified supremacy like Egypt — I meant England — but the cannon organized by
even the pale patriarchy of Christians
says He was Middle Eastern kin with wool hair and bronze skin,
then either God made flesh was a man of color bleached white with self-interest 
or the Messiah was really the first culprit of cultural appropriation,
the first Dolezal, the first white boy Rasta,
an agent of the Pope, an imposter who should’ve stuck to carpentry and pasta.

I wonder:
what is the profit of pretending to be the only people who can say
God looks like me?
I wonder what that would do to your sense of justice and peace.
I wonder: 
when the peanut gallery — 
ignorantly uneducated on the legal use of lethal force by law enforcement officials — 
implies that Mike earned his execution because he didn’t comply,
didn’t say, yes God, 
or yes Massa,
or yes Sir — 
when Megyn Kelly asks why we keep talking about Michael’s unarmed, un-breathing corpse being left in the street when there are 
“American citizens”
being held captive overseas,
when the officer who’s paid to protect and serve me 
says my black body isn’t human,
when the descendants of kings and dukes and slave masters 
size up the freedom and strength in our resilient, chocolate frames 
and call us demon,
sit in church on Sunday, with portraits of white Jesus,
and stand before a judge whose prisons 
have mopped the blood from black bodies since the days of poplar trees,
when these sins happen, 
white Christian,
I wonder
if you agree.
I wonder
how you feel.
I wonder what you see,
not when you look at me,
but when you look, for the first time,
in the mirror.

 — №227: White Jesus, Black Demon

Cover Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash