Cyd Fulton

Livin’ What Matters

81 seconds of video
56 baton blows
a Black man shrinks
beaten to the brink of Jim Crow

Black lives matter… to whom
red devil in blue
still hidin behind linen hoods

tazin skin
tattered bones battered
scattered over 246 years
since birth mattered

voter law
oppression guidelines
might as well re-establish “white only” signs
tug on neck snappin twine

I can’t breathe don’t rhyme
get outta here
with that serve and protect trash

it’s rubble
like brick from
16th Street Baptist Church blast

education for Blacks
a schism
better known as pipeline
to prison

not to mention
denationalization
of Dominican
Black Africans

Black lives
dressed in tabloid fodder
talk shows juxtapose who’s the father
don’t let Dr. Huxtable near your daughter

even before all this media commotion
Black lives arrived over the ocean
yet mainstream’s notion of good TV
is scandal and hip hop minus culture

numbin pain creation
viral images from Staten Island
and Fruitvale Station

supremacist self-righteous power
master’s brandin iron
don’t cool off in April showers

network noose
urgin killin
lockin
cold cockin
pacin
skittle chasin
life erasin
world bracin horror

protestors troublin Black middle class
busy worryin ‘bout pants hangin off ass

gun ‘em down
hunt ‘em down
leave ‘em danglin
for families to cut ‘em down

gunshots at White House
Medgar Evers shot in front of his house
no place safe

Mississippi
Emmett Till
Georgia
Kendrick Johnson

woman the family nucleus
America’s snaggletoothin her
tyin ropes tight and slammin doors 

Marissa Alexander
Assata Shakur

Scottsboro Boys
Central Park 5

keep hope alive
Marion Barry is dead
live by any means necessary
who shot Malcolm X

truth ain’t in no textbook
educate or retaliate
oppressive air suffocates

and resuscitates
day to day repression
in succession
some say Blacks come a long way

short lived fame
maimed with toota’s root
genital selfies on Instagram
that crap ain’t cute

brute banishes Blacks
for standin ground
by the way where’s H Rap Brown

where’s community centers
and comical camaraderie
economical and social hang ups
thugs gang up on twins

same skin
same tyranny

kill for designer jacket
crime on crime ain’t stop being Black yet
5am line up to buy sneakers
gun-to-the-head finders keepers

2Pac say
you ask why
don’t matter
my pockets got fatter
now everybody’s lookin for the latter

Sekou says
all depends, all depends on the skin,
all depends on the skin you're living in