Two young men were brutally slaughtered
on a street corner,
in our small town.

Blood flowed freely
filling cracked cemented crevices,
of a sidewalk leading nowhere.

They were gunned down,
by one whose color
belies a kinship.
Skins of rainbow browns
often kill too readily their own.

There are lost, living black spirits
walking among us.
Our walking dead consumed by fiery flames
fueled with disillusionment,
poverty,
drugs,
the multitudinous means of dying
while still possessing moving flesh.
They take no ownership for life.

Their angry apathy erodes the fertile soils
left at the dusk of ancestral sacrifices.
Their alienation prevents perspectives
of parched cracked earth moistened
by sweat and tears raining from black slaves.

They are unable to see a possible dawn.
Ultimately many more mothers' and fathers'  
weeping faces will hover
over manmade death boxes
wishing to restore breath, 
choked out by stifling self-hatred.