Accountability (In the Morning)

I could read every name on every tombstone
Have a grocery list full of strange fruit
Tell you why Emmett Till's ghost stopped gasping and just started shrugging his shoulders
Tell you why I'm not surprised that the NYPD's union representative is named Lynch
Only throw in a couple punchlines
Intricate metaphors, stuff like that

But the truth is
I don't know how to deal with the pain, anger, and sorrow I've become so accustomed to feeling
About every six months
Every news headline starts to look the same
I've started mixing up the names like
What was it again, another Trayvon Brown shot by another William Lynchman?
I mean, Darren Wilson, same characters, different book
Even the pages smell the same

They've been burning down our churches since the '60s
And I can't even tell the difference between gun smoke and incense anymore
Every exhale is met with a coughing fit
Noxious fumes and carcinogens fester inside us
I wonder what type of wood Jesus's crucifix was made out of
I think it was mahogany
It would explain why being brown is akin to carrying a cross

I don't know what to say anymore
It feels like my vocal cords have been bound up in nooses
I just don't have the energy to attend another funeral
Everybody dressed in black
Like a silent nod to God telling him that this is the color that brought us here today
And it hurts, knowing we have to be more stone than human
But man, at least the bullets won't penetrate as far as they used to

How do we make it stop?
I don't know who to hold accountable
For the withdrawal of our greatest wealth
The minds of our young are splattered on sidewalks
Instead of across a canvas or a notebook pag
The list of names grows exponentially with time
It all happens so fast, we can't tell
If the clock strikes 12 or the 12 strikes us for fun
Every breath might be our last
And they don't even have the decency to keep the air clean around here

Who is responsible for our condition?
Every single day of being a person of color in America
Means trying to put a phantom on trial for a genocide
Means trying to put history in handcuffs
Means throwing Molotov cocktails into a black hole
Hoping they hit something

Ain't it ironic, how we worry if every day will end in a wake?
You can't put a face on a system, but you can hold a mirror to it
Even if it's administrators or vampires with no reflections
They'll still burn in the sunlight if you leave it there long enough