By Any Means Necessary

When the first baby's skin rotted off her head
We should have known that the revolutionary cries were dead.

When the smell of rotting vessels rose to God in heaven
The missing Black girls were at a count of eleven
And God's children ignored the noses on their heads
We should have known the the revolutionary cries were dead.

Who came to the door to check on this man
Who could do such heinous things with his bare hands
To the body of some poor Black woman's baby?

And when they came to the door and knocked with their hands
Did they not see with their eyes what had happened to the land?

When bodies decorate the lawn of a home owned by a man
Whose mind has long departed
To whom also falls the blame for this man's action, living alone
And conspicuously unguarded?

Why, my goodness, do these Black girls learn love so hard?
Death is the only thing that outdoes the heavily scarred.
And even in death, my love, we shall not matter.
But with this poem and this life, I vow to shatter...

The silence, the silence that surrounds our screams
The silence, the silence that confounds our dreams.

And lest another one of us falls and dies
I replace my complacency with revolutionary cries.