George Floyd, I Did not Know You

George Floyd, I Did not Know You

(“After ten days, Daniel and his friends looked healthier than all the young men who ate the king’s food.” Daniel 1:15)

Will you eat the king’s meat,
Will you sit at the table of deceit,
Will you change your middle name,
Hoping it will sound nearly the same
As the swarms of modified eagles
Cackling like hens?

Will you visit the robbers’ den
Pretending it’s the temple?
Will you stand outside of it for a photo opp
To prove you are not the devil?
Will you kneel as an example
(on the necks of the devoted, no less)
of dominion you think you’ve been blessed with?

How long did it take for the blood to stop flowing?
How long did the air squeak like a dying balloon?
How long did you know there was not breath. He was
lifeless?

Will you refuse the king’s madness,
Will you fall on your faces and confess,
Will you join your tears in streets
Where blood stopped flowing, where the breath ceased
as the swarms of mystified people
pleading like moms.

Stay inside if you need too, stay outside if you want,
all I know is eight minutes is far too long to compress
a brother’s throat. Mingle your outrage with the grief
of too many removed from the scene, lives taken
unseen,
justice stolen like Macy’s front door and
peace bartered for projectiles piercing the soul

Of a nation broken and plagued. A nation only healed
By its own self-confession and sorrow. Today (and last
Century, and three before that) are the time for crying,
And judgement. 

And tomorrow may justice flow like
A river. Tomorrow may peace demand the rocks give way.

George Floyd, I did not know you. I know less of your anguish.
Teach us (we who stand outside cathedrals),
Rip us (we who sleep inside bedrooms),
Paint us (we who live so colorless),
Point us (we who navigate so well…

past our privilege in the famine of shame.)

Let us (fasting and sacrament) fully taste your pain.