Freddie Gray, we failed you.
It would seem, we always will.
We failed Amadou Diallo,
and all the rest on their list to kill.
Poor Michael Brown lay in the sun,
but his body cooled so fast.
And Trayvon still roams the night,
for being Black, he was harassed.
Eric, we failed you too.
What is there left to say?
They choked the life right out of you.
And no one was made to pay.
Oh we get upset and burn some things,
and then we quickly get over the pain.
They call us all bad thugs
but why you are dead, they can’t explain.
A mother slapped her child,
for throwing rocks and glass and such,
and the media played that up.
At that shit, they always clutch.
They always blame the victim,
for acting out of rage
“Our anger should be doused!”
So says the wise old sage.
Something’s wrong with that old sage,
He does not speak the truth.
A man is dead who did no wrong.
He was buried while in his youth.
Twelve, eighteen and twenty-two,
and on and on it goes.
These are the average ages
of Black bodies laid out in rows.
The funerals never stop.
And the buckets of tears are shed.
The lines are out the door,
but no one says what needs to be said.
Peace will never be ours to know
in this shithole built by slaves.
When have they ever cared for us,
these primates out of caves?
Never think the day will come
when they’ll stop the killing spree.
The time is now for you to act!
You’re a slave, you are not free!
Written by,
Shelby I. Courtland
©2015 Shelby I. Courtland
If anyone thinks that the racist cops will be held accountable for Freddie Gray’s death, are you serious? With video proof that Eric Garner was murdered in cold blood, where is the indictment? With video proof of the murder of Tamir Rice, where is the indictment? With video proof of the murder of John Crawford, where is the indictment? And certainly what happened to Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina deserves a mention. What slap on the wrist will that cop get even with being charged with murder? And poor Freddie Gray was just minding his business in what the whites labeled a ‘high crime area’ so he must have been committing a crime, but so far, we’ve yet to know what crime he committed. Oh, that’s right! He fled! Even if I was in a wheelchair, I would have fled as fast as my battery powered seat could get me the hell out of there especially seeing as how Black men don’t seem to fare well when coming into contact with AmeriKKKa’s storm troopers.
And we want to think that the deceased are resting in peace? Get real!
Oh and for the woman that slapped her child, he should have hauled off and slapped some sense into your ass!
shelbycourtland 
If it were my son, I would have done the same thing. It isn’t worth losing a son in this mess. There are enough hot heads out there that will get the message across. Keep the cameras rolling and keep putting it out there. We’ve lost enough young (and not so young) lives.
Leslie
LikeLike
She stated that she smacked him because she did not want him to become another Freddie Gray. What did Freddie Gray do to get himself murdered? He was arrested on April 12th and still there is no explanation as to why he was arrested in the first place.
From what I’ve read, he was talking with some people in what was considered by the police to be a ‘high crime area’ and if that is the case then just about every area in Baltimore, MD is considered a ‘high crime area’ so that’s pretty much inescapable.
On this one, we will agree to disagree because I would have been out there fucking shit up. Going about it all peaceful like has gotten us where? Go ahead! Ask the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.! Oh, that’s right! He was most violently assassinated after having gone about protesting all peaceful like. So what the fuck difference does it make how we go about it? The end result is the same! I am fed up past my eyeballs with being told to act all nice and calm and peaceful when Black people have been doing that shit for years too numerous to count and still it is open season on us!
Thank you for your comment.
LikeLike
I feel for those mothers, I just wouldn’t want to lose a son. Things definitely have to change. The white people have to join in.
Leslie
LikeLike
Leslie, don’t think that I don’t appreciate your comment because I do. The problem is that if you check out social media(such as Facebook and Twitter, which I am not on, I just read blogs of people who are upset by what is said by whites on social media) you will find that many whites are wondering just what is our problem. They don’t see what is going down with Black people getting killed for no reason other than for the color of their skin as a problem. They don’t feel as though they have any ‘skin’ in what I guess, is a game to them. The cops are playing “WackaBlack” with us and it is A-OK. I have seen white women clutch their purses when myself and my cousin walk past them. A Black man told me the other day that when he pulled his car up to a school, when he got out, he heard the click of a lock and when he turned, a white woman was staring at him in horror as if he was some villain in a movie, “The Black and the Furious!” It was only after his children ran to his car that she unlocked her door and got out. This happens all the time.
I am fighting a lawsuit over damages I suffered due to a white woman texting while driving that resulted in a multi-vehicle pileup on the highway. I had to throw screaming fits because the case was originally dismissed by the prosecutor. If I had caused that crash, my Black ass would have been found guilty so fucking fast, my head would be spinning. Severely injured people and totaled vehicles were carted from the scene and this bitch was never to be slapped on her goddamn wrist for what she caused and yet Black people have done far less and are dead for no reason.
White people just don’t get it because they never have to think about what they are going to do when facing down the wall of blue. They don’t have to worry about justice and the color of their skin. We do. We get no justice because of the color of our skin and I for one am sick and fucking tired of it! We have to fight hard for rights that whites don’t even have to concern themselves with or even think about.
Like I always say, “Walk a mile in my shoes and then come talk to me!” You’d figure out quick where I’m coming from!
LikeLike
My dear Shelby, I am thinking of the mothers who have lost there sons for this very reason. I hear your anger and it is totally justified. What is going on is no different than what went on in Nazi Germany and it has to stop. Do be careful because you can’t fight if you are dead. Also I’m pretty sure that you will have a mother too, who will be devastated if anything happens to you. Some how we have to fight this fight together. The first civil rights movement brought us only so far. Lets put our heads together and see how we can move it further along without any more bloodshed.
Leslie
LikeLike
My mother, damn her eyes!, does not give a goddamn about anyone! She’s already got one dead daughter, so another one won’t fucking matter to her. We ain’t even speaking anyway!
What is the point in calling it living if you’re a goddamn slave??!! That ain’t fucking living! Those people in Baltimore have been put on lockdown. They are facing snipers after a goddamn curfew because of a burnt up CVS? Black bodies are buried all across this fucked up shithole and we are supposed to keep calm and continue on as though nothing untoward has happened? We’re already dead! You don’t get that? This ain’t living Leslie! Not when those who look like you get gunned down, spine severed, children shot and killed for playing with a toy gun in a park, a man is murdered because he had a broken taillight and owed child support and when this happens, we are to bend the fuck over and keep taking it up the ass without any lube? Seriously? For real?
We ARE ALREADY DEAD! Just read the news! Check out the videos! Where is Eric Garner? He’s in a video getting choked to death for selling some untaxed cigarettes! Where is Tamir Rice? That twelve year old child is underground because he had the nerve to play in a park with a toy gun. Why is Walter Scott not driving down the goddamn street? Because he was shot in the back 8 times for running away from a racist ass cop! Why is Freddie Gray dead? He ran away from some racist ass cops!
When Black folks are born, we need to take out life insurance because we don’t fucking get old. Tamir Rice, twelve years old, dead! Trayvon Martin, dead at 17! Michael Brown, dead at 18. Eric Garner, dead at 43. John Crawford, dead at 22! Freddie Gray, dead at 25! If you’re Black, you don’t get to see 80! We’re fucking lucky if we get to celebrate our 6th goddamn birthday!
Fuck it! I’m done!
LikeLike
I hear you Shelby, but you don’t stand a chance with the weapons and man power that they have. You have to fight smart. I totally agree with you that this injustice must stop. You have to organize for urban WF. It can be done.
Leslie
LikeLike
Yes we did. Along with many others. 😦
LikeLike
Exactly Prince! That goddamn white man’s shit should still be burning in Baltimore. But we ain’t got the balls, nor what it takes to keep the momentum going. As soon as they roll out the fucking National Guard, we act just like slaves do and calm the fuck down and get on with the business of obeying “Massa, sir, yes sir!” And then in another month, somewhere else in AmeriKKKa, another innocent Black person will be killed by another racist with a gun and a badge and a few hundred more of us will be going the fuck off until massa says we can’t. We ain’t told massa to fuck off yet? Hell naw! And apparently, we never will! But we’ll moan and whine and beg for some goddamn justice that’s never even looked our way, much less been all up in our grill!
Yeah! Let us continue to play nice and continue attending funerals and shedding buckets of tears and praying. Oh, let us pray! “White man’s god! Do something! Anything! But get the white man’s motherfucking boot all up off of us and get him to stop killing us for nothing, would you please! Hear my plea!”
There! That should work!
I thank you for your comment Prince!
LikeLiked by 1 person
The only reason Tubularsock would smack a son for throwing rocks at the police is if the little fucker wasn’t hitting any! Young people today need more rock throwing skills!
Great poem and post! Burn baby burn!
LikeLike
Exactly Tubularsock! I would have smacked him upside the head ONLY if he missed but I would have been too busy myself, attempting to get my aim true! We Black folks ain’t never had no goddamn sense because if we did, we’d have gotten some damn where by now. But what do we do? Castigate our own offspring for having the balls to do what we won’t do. I don’t give a rotten ass goddamn for some fucking property because as far as this fucked up government is concerned, that’s all the fuck I am IS property! So to hell with THAT shit!
I am SO fucking mad that I am fucked up and feeling ancient because if I wasn’t, I would have hauled ass off to Baltimore, quick fast and in a goddamn hurry. I want so goddamn bad to get to Baltimore’s City Hall and give that goddamn piece of shit mayor coon head Rawlings-Blake, a piece of my damn mind!
And again, if it was up to me, it would be a case of BURN BABY BURN! Fuck the National Guard and to hell with some goddamn curfew! I ain’t a goddamn child! A motherfucker gone tell me to stay off the goddamn streets? Never fucking think it! The motherfucker would have to arrest my ass first! And when I got out, I’d get arrested again for the same goddamn thing!
Thank you Tubularsock! I can always count on you to come in here and get on with it and not spout niceties and bullshit! Thank you for that!
LikeLike
Great post Shelby…I will leave it at that as I don’t believe that I have any right to comment further. Since I have never walked in your shoes and have no idea what it is like to be harassed in the same way that you have, I defer to you. As you know I love your passion and your “in your face” writing. Keep fighting the good fight and be safe. – Dom
LikeLike
Thank you Dom! I sincerely appreciate the fact that you understand that you don’t know what it’s like to be me and the millions of others who look like me. I really, really do appreciate you not coming in here telling me how I should feel or what not to do or what not to think about doing or that we are all in one boat together and let’s ‘kumbaya together’ and anything else to that effect.
Bless your heart for hoping that I stay safe. The only reason that I am staying safe is due to that goddamn car accident because if not for that, I would either be locked up in a Baltimore jail or shot by a goddamn National Guard sniper’s gun because I would most definitely be out at night in Baltimore. I have lived there and that city means much to me and it makes me sick to think of what is going down in Baltimore now and I am only able to hobble across the goddamn floor!
Again, I sincerely thank you for your comment! You are ever the brave one for stepping all up into this here hot ass kitchen! I doff my cyber hat to you, like I always do!
LikeLike
And I cannot believe that the owner’s son of the Baltimore Orioles had this to say about what is going down in Baltimore and cities like it all across this shithole!
…and underneath this was the following:
That’s the goddamn truth!
LikeLike
If I could have been in Baltimore, I would have been in the streets with Shelby fucking things up. While it’s really hard to combat the personal racism that festers inside individual whites, institutional racism can be fought – even if the cost of eliminating it brings the whole capitalistic system down. Telling people they have to accept and adjust to institutional racism is like condemning them to a kind of living death.
LikeLike
THANK YOU DR. BRAMHALL!! You are another person that I can count on to come all up in here with sense and sensibility! And that is what is needed, ” to bring the whole capitalistic system down!” That is why the focus has been on some burned down CVS store and some goddamn vehicles like they mean shit! Fuck THAT shit! Oh forget about poor Freddie Gray! He means nothing but those goddamn buildings and cars and the fact that I can’t go to Camden Yards and watch the motherfucking Orioles play is THE worst travesty of this whole goddamn fucked up situation!
No, we are supposed to continue to march silently down the fucking street holding a limp ass sign begging some filthy ass racists to stop murdering us! That is just the goddamn end of enough!
It galls me to no end that I can’t be there to fuck shit up!
Exactly! That is most definitely what it is! Thank you for stating that clearly and in no uncertain terms!
Dr. Bramhall! Again! I thank you!! I got to highlight your comment!
LikeLike