The Second Day
“You always see the white people coming out on the second day”
and he’s right.
We land on CNN as the lesser of however many evils,
and Anderson Cooper has joined Don Lemon on the
streets of a smoldering American city.
The white people have come out
but there’s plenty of daylight left.
There have been plenty of second days, and first ones too,
each with their nights
when the white people drive home to
the boondocks in Crestwood and Columbia,
Fairfax, and Buckhead, and Levittown, and Malibu,
from Bodymore, Murderland back to the Charm City and the charming ‘burbs.
And the truth is that they don’t hate The City’s gooey chocolate center,
as long as it melts in the mouth and not in the hand.
Truth is they try not to care until the bricks
from row houses and long-gone factories
start flying.
Dawn,
then light and white arrive for
representation without taxation from beyond beyond the pale.
But they/we mean well, even when those labels break down along fault
lines old and new
because who would call us we or me they?
Labels break down and break down and cry,
at the irony of peace officer,
at America’s birth defect.
And they/we mean well but we sure as hell don’t know what or how to mean
but we want to be with you even if we aren’t “with it.”
There have been more first nights than one might have expected since the
Official End of Racism
with the election of
Emperor Barack Hussein Obama, the first of his name,
more pain to restrain the drama
unfolding, live and direct from the revolution
framed by cameras topped with choppers
competing for airspace with ghetto-birds
and all these – just. words.
The truth is I am a day too late
with a well-meaning urge to translate
because it feels better than watching.