With planned barbarism they came.
Safety in numbers.
Their eyes as dead as a Great White’s.
Jittering on their hair triggers.
Never questioning the barked orders of their commanders.
My house of precious ones scream from their interrupted sleep.
Boots on the floor doom doom.
Screams cut short by gagging sounds. Ballistic noise.
And I, with rebellious heart,
try to find courage, think of action. Too late.
With fists of iron they drag us outside
under sputtering streetlamps.
Multitudes of scarcely-known neighbors
in lines on the night time street,
crying, shouting, begging.
Random rifle reports,
not warnings. People fall.
The squeaky wheels got the grease.
And I am trying to calm down,
hugging my own
with emotion scarcely shown
until this night.
“You are the father?”,
one of these brutes says.
“Come here. Stand here.”
The shark eyes look into mine,
and my only thoughts,
my last thoughts,
are “why such black automated hate?”
“does he not see me?”
“I am a person”.
SMACK. He hits me in the cheekbone with his gun,
and I stumble, bleeding.
The children scream and try to help me up.
That is a mistake, for they do not want you up.
But I stand stupidly.
Brute puts his hand under my chin, and tilts my head back.
And then, and then.
There’s a bang and I fall in my turn.
My teeth shattered, hole through my palate and on and on.
I swallow and swallow, but there’s too much.
Why.
Why.