trying to save a life, just like my friend (written on myspace 3.29.09)
Current mood:
melancholy
i'm just really sick of it....melancholythe killings....the constant murders, the disrespect of life and the disrespect of the lives impacted by the loss of a loved one....and so my story begins....
when March 20 arrived, i was already in Detroit, living my life the way i love to live it....i was at the Women of the World poetry slam, of which i still have yet to blog about the "rest" of the experience, which minus all the favortism and cliche cliques, was off the chain...but i digress....anywho....
so thats what i was doing.....who knew that back at home, one of my friends, who i have known for something like ten years, was trying hard to breathe life back into someone who had given him the same type of nasty looks, i often found myself being "blessed" with at the slam.....
as he was minding his own business, in his house with his cousin....someone was outside in the middle of an arguement....and the natural response happened....shots were fired...because of course, we live in a time where fights are few and far in between, and guns are the method of problem solving....thats something i just can't adapt to myself, but hey...whatever i guess....
the funny thing is, i heard someone say the other day, i think it was on the news, that the problem is the gun laws....i find that hilarious, mostly in due in part to the fact that the legal gun carriers aren't the people going around shooting up young black men.....so changing the gun laws will only make us law abiding citizens unarmed when the law breakers decide to "solve problems".....so to speak....
but back to my story...where was i...friday...march 30....i was in detroit, probably around the time we were chilling in the room, deciding on what to do and what wear to that nights events, my friend was hearing gunshots outside of his door and as he went to look, he saw a 26 year old man fall to the ground....what is one to do in that situation....should you run back in the house....hide....close your doors, hit the ground and pray to no bullets come in your house.....or do you do what he did....run to help someone....while we were laughing in the room about bullshit, my friend was giving his best CPR rendition to this young black man, who lay in the grass, bleeding from a gunshot wound to his chest.....hearing my friend describe how this guy took his last breath almost broke me....hearing him talk about the rolling of his eyes, the sound of his stunted breathing, that death gurgle, hurt my soul....he said he brought him back once....but it didnt last...he tried to tell him to stay with him, but what can you do.....how do you watch death come take someone away in front of you, while you fight with it not to....even if you dont know that person....
....how do you not feel traumatized, watching this man lay lifeless on the grass, two doors down from where you rest your head every night....how do you not pass out permanently from watching that mans 3 year old child, who isnt fully comprehending whats happening, try to run to his sleeping father....or maybe the question should be, how do you do this to someone and not care....
to this day, my former roommate, who has her g-stringed ass paraded across myspace as i type, is one of the few people i have struggled with forgiving for the things she did to me....but on my worst day, my drunkest and my highest, i would never kill her....i would, how did Jill Scott say, Whup. that. ass. (why did i get married), but i wouldnt kill her....too many other lives are involved in that process, that you can't undo...its just not fair....
and the most unfair thing, is its not fair that we have to continually watch these stories play out on the news....people dont get caught....they stand behind us at grocery stores....pump gas next to us....they buy up bars at strip clubs...and no one knows they have blood on their hands.....its not fair....if you wanna be big bad man and go kill up everybody, do it and go straight to jail....take your punishment like the man you think you are, or thought you were when you pulled that trigger....stop making me share my world, oxygen and life with you, because thats what we do....share our lives with killers who peel caps, toss guns in fall creek and keep on living like nothing ever happened....imagine if the hovey street murderers were still on the loose....
....sometimes i'm numb and sometimes it just hurts...im blessed not to have known that many people who have been laid to rest courtesy of a bullet or two or three or four or more....but i know some...some were close....some were just people that passed by my life....the funny thing is....what if the people being killed, are killers themselves.....what if that dude, who my friend tried hard to sell life to, took someone's life two weeks or two years ago...and im NOT saying he did...i dont even know him....i'm just saddened by his death....he was 26 years old...
its a never ending cycle....we'll never stop it....never...the world will end the way it began....with death, killing...disrespect....but dammit if one of these poems of mine will unload someone's gun, i will die a happy poet....i just want to save a black man's life...i do...i really do....i want to breathe life back into their soul before CPR becomes the only option....i wanna save my people....damn near more than i wanna save myself....
i just dont know how
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