Call and Response

In the tradition of

African-American gospel songs

There is a musical element

Known as call and response

Shout out and shout back

We shall overcome

A song that never ends

But only echoes

Louder and louder

Reverberating the call

Like a hymn within the vaulted walls

Of a church long burned down to the ground

The same ground watered by the blood

Of bodies deemed too black

To have ever known light

So we skirt over the issue

Until the uprising ensues

And we are screaming

Discordant and dismal

Over the sound of our

Common Humanity

Because when you water the ground with blood

The only thing that grows is blame

The only thing that grows is media coverage

That has hijacked our call

And engineered our response

The call: We shall overcome

The response: Black Lives Matter

Blue Lives Matter

All Lives Matter

As if we can give away meanings to lives

Like their gifts on one of Oprah's fucking talk shows

Your life gets to matter!

Your life gets to matter!

Your life gets to matter!

But no lives matter when we're

Beating each other black and blue

Missing the point

Missing the all-encompassing point

That we can't all be encompassed by

the politics of respectability

Because respectability says

If you just follow the law

You'll have nothing to worry about

If you just heed Jim Crow circling above your head

You won't have to worry about the noose circling around your neck

Have you ever seen a lynched body hanging from a tree

The way his legs sway and his mortality echoes

Such a heavy piece of strange fruit that the bow

Threatens to break

And how it doesn't

It just listens

Because it knows the sound of a lifeless body

Isn't a gospel song

The sound of a group of people

Telling you that they're being killed

Isn't a gospel song

There may be a call

But they don't need a response

Sometimes they just need you to shut up and listen.