Stop the Killing
Popular opinion?
—we need a death penalty to deter individuals who would otherwise harm or kill people—
Tell me, is it working?
Tookie is dead.
Has the killing stopped?
Are your obituaries void of violent death?
Are your children no longer
Dying in the streets?
Did the gangs dissolve?
Have your dead returned to life?
Where is this deterrent?
Where is your proof?
You killed him while calling him a murderer.
You killed him for his crimes.
What is the lesson in that?
You basque in your invisible line
Of justification
While applauding your own sin.
Tell me,
What have you done, Joeblow American,
To stop the violence
To stop the hunger
To fill the empty promises
Of children who wander and
Die in the neighborhoods
You are blessed to live outside of.
Can you even spare a kind word or a smile?
You can't afford to build a
Poor man's house,
But you have all the money in the world to
Build a prison.
Out of sight,
Out of mind-
Your morbid philosophy.
You condemn those with no heart
While yours can barely beat inside
The stone you have built around it.
Tell me, are the victims of his crimes
Healed now?
You are a respecter of life!
Yes, you are,
As long as it fits into your tiny minded
Vision of hypocrisy
Damn you America,
For forcing me to take part
In your death rituals,
For forcing responsibility of blood
Onto my hands.
Because I am your citizen
I am guilty of your murder.
You killed him while he
Spoke against the very violence
That locked him in your prisons,
Yet you refuse to accept
Your own responsibility
Of murder.
One more time
You told all those who hate and kill
The solution is in killing those you hate.
Do you care who dies
Outside your own little gangs
You call family and friend?
Religious rightest, can you love your enemy?
Yet you demanded that of him.
Gangsta on the street,
You win when you shed no blood.
Killing is what they want you to do.
It is why they build the steel beds
Encased in concrete
Softer than their hearts.
When you
Bury your anger at them in bullets,
When you seek your revenge,
When you try to fill your empty stomach
With opiates, or blood money, or death
They win.
Freedom is found in standing as you are
And insisting on peace.
Speaking your mind in the face of death
Without taking life.
Proper society hates as much as you.
Have no doubt.
Don't justify their hate,
Diffuse it.
Stand up, like Martin Luther King
Or sit, like Rosa Parks.
You are a child of God
You can make the difference in this world
Filled with hateful small people.
And if you die as a result of standing above
The pits of violence
What of it?
Man judges only by his own pettiness.
Better to face a creator
Who knows the facts,
Who softens the human heart,
Who welcomes you into his kingdom.
Damn the archaic laws of eye for eye-
Tooth for tooth.
If we all paid up
Even the most righteous among us
Would be blind men
Gumming our food.
Don't buy the lie they sell you
STOP THE KILLING
From the highest courts of the world
STOP THE KILLING
From the lowest gutter in the street
STOP THE KILLING
STOP THE KILLING
STOP THE KILLING
period