The following are a selection of poems written by Adrian College student, Donald Moses, in response to the police killing of George Floyd. #blacklivesmatter
Voices
I live in fear
Not because I’m scared of death
But because I’m scared to see someone else that looks
like me dead
I live in anger
Not because people are burning buildings
But because a mother has to watch her son get buried
I live in sadness
Not because I’m sad of what people have to say
But because people would rather say all lives matter
in spite of our race getting stomped on
The voices have been whispering for years now
A man took a knee, the country rejected him
The whispers turned into talking
Another boy got shot
The voices turned into shouts
2 more men got killed
The shouts turn into screaming
Sit back and watch the movie you created and pray it
ends good
Let’s look for a change
Or else the voices will get louder
Air
It hurts to watch
Even worse when he doesn’t stop
We watch it over and over
The reality comes in closer and closer
Another death of a black male
He laid there for 8 minutes and all he could do is wail
People walked by and didn’t even help
The other cops by him stood there and said “welp”
The knee so deep in his neck
To the cop his life meant nothing but a tiny spec
As a grown man cried and begged for his life
All people could do is sit back and record it for the hype
As I sat and watched the video I thought, “that could’ve
been me
Struggling on the ground, a knee on my neck not being
able to breath
It’s hard to imagine someone with so much power could
do these things with no shame
But then I realized being black means you're forced to live
in the real life “Most dangerous game”
So you can get mad and say “All protests are wrong and it
isn’t fair”
But that man cried and pleaded on the ground for
almost nine minutes, and couldn’t even get any air.
