(I've been straddling this post for full on a week. With each new set of facts revealed, a deed that was already so terrible got uglier and more horrific still. I'll have more to utter; but this much is what I could bear to say in the earlies.)

IT’S my birthday and I’m writing about death.

I was awakened from deep sleep by the second bite from a mosquito, itching something awful. Bloodsucker ... just one of life’s little encounters.

I went to the kitchen and had a drink of water: life elixir. I remembered, “My birthday!” I swung to check the time on the microwave, and in that instant it went from 00:00 to 00:01.

I turned officially a year older. That’s so much more than some people will ever have again.

Which “War on terror”?

A man I never knew, a man I’ll never know, a man I know of now because of horror and tragedy, will never turn one year older.

I will say his name: George Floyd. I will say his name again: George Floyd.

I will weep more tears, feel more rage, push past more fear, twist out from under more hate than in the last couple of days. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat ... for a while yet to come, and possibly every time I remember.

And every time I remember, my mind will run through all the other such terrorist killings that I know of in near or distant history: hundreds, thousands, millions, whole civilizations wiped out on the whim of mad men.

“Nothing” is never enough

What could ever be good enough to atone for such a thing? What could ever be said to quite convey the inhumanity? What can I write that will have any deep meaning or impact?

Black square birthday?

It’s my birthday and I am not dead.

Who alive today could say, “He’s not so bad off. I’d trade places,” and have it remotely be true?

Yet, there are disagreements about how this murder should be looked at:

| “Put it in perspective.”

PERSPECTIVE!

Thanks to social media everybody got the stone cold perspective of how it played out.

I almost never look at Internet violence, but I looked this time, because the words describing what had happened were so horrific to imagine, I had to see if it was truly so.

And what I felt, how could anyone NOT feel it.

Oh, because we’re all different races. But we’re not fucking different SPECIES!

Where death comes in

We all like to think that people wouldn’t do half the sh** they do if other people could see them at it. But these cops knew they were being witnessed and recorded, and still went ahead and lynched a Black man for being a different race.

The truth is that whether they’re being looked at or not, people do what they have little control of or what they think they can get away with.

If the former is the case with police officers who questionably kill specific types of persons, then the psychological determination should be they cannot be trusted with authority, especially not with discharging duties involving the use of deadly force.

If the latter, then the question must be asked: Why is there this clearly evinced belief in America that one can simply get away with killing people of colour, especially if one is the po-po?

. Even in my very mixed nation there are those who feel dark-complexioned persons should live in shadows. What's worse is that they expect you to agree.

Casual killers

Oh, man! I’m over here in my country, I’m multi-ethnic, I’m for peace and love, I was raised not to hit, but right now I’m resonating the words from the film The Boxer: “I’m not a killer; but this ... makes me feel to kill.”

I mean, the deed was so easily done. In less time than it takes to bake a cake, four men worked together to end a life. For what? For what now?

Were you protecting something? Were you saving somebody’s life? Were you thwarting a great catastrophe? Why, then, did you have to do it!

The answer is clear: they wanted to do it. They wanted to watch it being done. They wanted to do it together. That’s murder. That’s why they must be tried as criminals.

Still, there are many who will rush to their defence, for whatever equally heartless reasons. But let me invite all of you into yet another perspective.

          Anybody out there, whatever you are – race, religion, nationality, class, creed – imagine that self-same footage that’s viral on social media of George Floyd’s last moments alive. Now then, instead see your son, your mother, your husband, your best friend, just anybody you care for, in the exact circumstances.

Don’t try to weasel out by saying, “That will never happen. You don’t know what he did. My person would never ...” I’m asking you to see this happening the same way to someone who matters to you.

Right. So it’s done. You’re okay? You think “They were just doing their jobs”? If anybody asks, you can sincerely say, “Why would I be angry? I see how this could happen.”

          There are a whole lot of liars in the world. Bloodsuckers. I mean, people hate corbeaux (vultures) so much, but at least those animals wait until something is dead before they eat out its heart.

Come Good

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Photos by Jhaye-Q Trinbago Photography