Please Let Me Stand

He’s afraid of me.

What can I possibly

Say to give him peace?

I can see it in his face.

And three things just

Crossed his mind

And two of them have

To do with me not leaving

Here breathing,

Past the gate blocked

By this keeper of the peace.

And he can’t see,

But I can,

The error of his ways

The ways that block

My airways,

The tazer that will force

My bladder to give way

And further humiliate me,

In this hooked-up

State that I knew,

Would someday take

Place in of all places,

Within the boundary lines of

The neighborhood that I saved

Paycheck after shrinking

Paycheck to purchase in.

And I am at the bottom

Of this crowd of blue

Creases and they are

Shouting obscene and

Incoherent things,

Things

That I forbid my four

Young black men

Saying.

But they scramble and fade,

And the harsh world

Is getting softer as it becomes

Harder for me to breathe.

And all I can think of

Is the wife that I was on

The way to meet for

A lunch that I promised

For all of the things that

She endures of me,

And the missing that seems

To be a thing of her

Future, her forever, now,

Because mine is ending,

Here, under this man

And his gang of

Trusted soldiers of peace.

If I could just stand,

Once more,

A man.