POEMS FOR GEORGE FLOYD

Beau Beausoleil is a white poet and activist who has written this series of poems in response to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020. These poems stand in solidarity with the demonstrations against systemic racism around the world.

Please share this broadside widely, A Summary of Guidelines for Extrajudicial Police Street Sentencing of African Americans.

We are seeking a publisher for this series in book form. Contact overlandbooks@earthlink.net.

Beau’s poems stand in witness to some of the most immoral acts of our time. In addition to POEMS FOR GEORGE FLOYD, two other series appear in the MPP Digital Poetry Series: War News and In Ukraine: Poems. In 2019, Moving Parts Press published a letterpress edition of Beau’s book, The Long Distance.

Find more from the MPP Digital Poetry Series here.

---

 

George Floyd
In Palestine

I will bring
the tender
blue flowers
that I
love so much
to your house
hoping that
because of them
no one
will desire
to kill you

I want to
bring down
the words
that hold
all of this
violence
in place

Do not
let someone
dig a second grave
for me
so that anyone
might murder me
twice

(Written on May 24, 2021)

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The
Verdict
(for George Floyd)

Let us
determine
this day
and all
that follow

Let us
not forget
the blood
that
continues
to wash
over and
under us

Let us
see this
one day
not as
a fixed
star

but as
a settling
sky
of rough
hope
that has
finally
come to
ground
around us

(Written on April 21, 2021)

 

---

 

Instructions To
The Jury
(for George Floyd)

He killed
George Floyd
because he
understood
that he
had the
power
and the
right to
kill him

that George
Floyd’s
existence
his very
breathing
was a
continuing
threat

that
George Floyd’s
life
needed
to be
brought to
the ground

controlled
handcuffed
silenced and
minutes later
discarded

And that
this was
an accepted
part
of his
“Community 
Policing”

(Written on April 19, 2021)

 

---

 

Before
They Lifted
Your Lifeless
Body
(for George Floyd)

As they
forced
you
down
to the
paved
city
ground
next to
the
police
car

one of
the
sidewalk
witnesses
called out
“You
can’t
win”

(meaning
that you
would never
win against
the spontaneous
overwhelming
racist aggression
of your own
country)

And
you
replied
“I don’t
want to
win”

(meaning
that you
understood
the handcuffs
and the
legacy of
uniformed
killing)

You never
said that
you didn’t
want to
breathe
into the
next
hour

you didn’t
offer up
your life
in exchange
for a
counterfeit
twenty
dollar
bill

you just
wanted to
go on
living

And
none of
the police
really paid
much
attention
to your
slow
murder

They had
come there
to win

As they always have

(Written on April 12, 2021)

 

---

 

Exhibit 17
(for George Floyd)

17
small
birds
fall
out of
the sky
each day
to mark
the places
where
Black
Americans
have been
murdered
for four
hundred
years

17 small
birds
fall
out of
the sky
into
streets
houses
beds
doorways
cars
rivers
oceans
tree limbs

in custody
under suspicion
or on the
paths
leading home

17
small birds
fall
through my
white
imagined
memory
into a
plainly
seen
Black
reality

17 small
birds
falling
from the
blue sky
of our
country’s
history

17 small
dead
birds
sewn over
the eyes
hands
left knee
and mouth
of every
murderer

as a verdict

(Written on April 6, 2021)

Exhibit 17 is the photo evidence in the murder trial of Officer Chauvin in which he is looking up at the bystanders with his knee pressing down on George Floyd’s neck. It’s been referred to and shown a number of times during the trial and each time it’s like another stinging slap to the face of the viewer. I felt it necessary to create my own way into exhibit 17.

 

---

 

West Of
The Moon
(for George Floyd)

The bleeding
morning light
moves sideways
along the legs
of the kitchen
table

the radio
is trying
to kill me
with more
testimony

In every
shared breath
I am
one of
those trying
to push through
the dreaming
ice floes
of my
white silence

When I
listen to
Billie
Holiday
her voice
is always
at an angle
to the
words

Always
searching for
where she can
break  the music
into the
hard truth
of  living

When I
first  listened to
Billie Holiday
sing
Strange
Fruit
I realized
that an
unending
lynching
can be
rendered
beautifully
ugly
by the pain
and sorrow
of a
voice
entering
needle like
into the
opening veins
of any number
of guilty bystanders

(Written on April 3, 2021)

 

---

The Second Day
Of The Trial
(for George Floyd)

Watching
you die
on each
police
body
camera

traffic
going
by a
few feet
away

listening
to you
beg to
get up

listening as
you call out
for those you
love

to just breathe

Witnesses
yelling
for officer
Chauvin
to lift his
knee from
your neck
to check
your pulse

but Chauvin
and the
other
police officers
can’t seem to
stop themselves
as they slowly
murder you
in front of our
entire country

Captured
on these videos
are a few minutes
of over
400
years of
violent
white
racism

Where are
our own
white body
cameras
how do we
turn them on
and
point them
inward

We have much
to see
to examine
to feel disgust for
to learn from
to change forever

(Written on April 1, 2021)

 

---

 

Alternate Jurors &
Expert Witnesses
(for George Floyd)

Alternate jurors are selected in some cases
to take the place of jurors who may
become ill (or enraged by lies) during the trial.
Alternate jurors hear the evidence
(including fabricated evidence) just as the other jurors do,
but they don’t participate in the (whitewashed) deliberations
unless they replace an original juror (who may have been threatened,
bribed, beaten or disappeared).

(Text -The American Bar Association)
(Commentary By This Writer)

The court may impanel up to 6 alternate jurors
(with similar death experiences)
to replace any jurors who are
unable to perform ( or understand the concept of justice)
or who are disqualified (after establishing the truth)
from performing their duties.

A List Of The Six Alternate Jurors
In The Trial Of Derek Chauvin
For The Murder Of
George Floyd

1. Breonna Taylor

2. Eric Garner

3. Oscar Grant

4. Ahmaud Arbery

5. Rayshard Brooks

6. Sandra Bland

An expert witness is a person with specialized skill sets+
whose opinion may help a jury make sense
of the factual evidence of a case.

Expert Witnesses Who Might Provide
Further Historical Insight If Called Upon

1. The Reverend Martin Luther King
(Assassinated April 4, 1968, Memphis, TN. )

2. Malcolm X
(Assassinated February 21, 1965, Audubon
Ballroom, Manhattan, New York)

(Written on March 12, 2021)

 

---

 

Minding
Our Work
(for George Floyd)

We are poets
and we make
up things

we make up
mountains and
rooms with
open windows

we make
up falling
stars
and
shadow moons
that come
down to
rest in
our open
hands

We make up
chairs and beds
and briefly
inhabit them

we imagine love
and write about it

But we don’t
have to
make up
enslavement
racism
or white privilege
and the 400
sharp edged years
that followed

they have always
been around us

And we didn’t have to
make up
lynchings
segregation
or even
his knee on your neck
or police bullets
chasing after
so many Black lives
cut short
right here

in this country
where we
write our poems

(Written on March 11, 2021)

 

---

The Ruined
Body Of
Justice

You can
see a lot
in a few
collapsing
minutes

A woman
trying to
live

A man
trying to
breathe

A young
person
starting to
understand

(Written on December 11, 2020)

 

---

A Poet
On The
Coast

Neither of my hands
has ever known
what the other
is thinking

My right hand knows
I am lost in
an ashen forest
after the death
of my country

My left hand knows
that I am
still trying to
translate the
violent murder
of George
Floyd
into
understandable
words

There has
always been
a rooted world
under the
white concrete
of my skin

And it is there
that I pray and swear
in equal amounts
as I try to
bring my two
hands together
on the page

(Written on September 23, 2020)

 

---

 

Words Slide Away
(for Charlie Parker)

It’s impossible
to catch
up with
every
run
of
your
notes

but
you
did

and
ran
them
back
again
in
another
direction

Even now
we keep
trying to
confess
your name

Even
as each
Black body
keeps falling
away

You
could live
but not
sleep
within
our white
nightmares
that ran
the length
of
your
life

You kept
crossing
and
recrossing
against
every
red
light
that
this
country
put
up
to
slow
you
down

You should
know
that your
horn
still starts
cars braking
buses
pulling
over
shouts
and
cries
from corner
sinners
and
drifting
healers

These days
I think
of you

Because
as in
your music

Nothing
is at rest anymore

(Written on September 14, 2020)

 

---

 

On Maintaining
A Disruptive
Memory

Take
two
long
breaths
and
keep
one
for
yourself

Take
two
long
breaths

And
hold
the
other
for
the
rest
of
your
life
for
George
Floyd

(Written on September 12, 2020)

 

---

 

The Loss
Of What
Held You

You sit
on the
garden
bench
at
dusk

As
always
you trust
that
two
moons
will
rise

Each
of them
needed
to share
the weight
of your
grief

(Written September 3, 2020)

 

---

 

For Jacob Blake
A Citizen Of
Kenosha
Wisconsin

Our
president
blames
those
he
holds
apart
from
justice
for
their
own
death

After
all
it
was
their
fault
for being
there

Our president
wants us
to know
that
racist
violence
in defense
of his
imagined
white
order
is called
unhindered
Patriotism

(Written September 2, 2020)

 

---

 

The Police
Draw
Their
Guns

Jacob
Blake
was
shot
seven
times
as
he
reached
for

his
own
life

(Written August 25, 2020)

 

---

 

Unwritten
(for George Floyd)

1.

We
sleep
under our
own
nightmare
sky

Our
hearts
beating
like the wings
of a small
trapped bird

2.

Before
waking

Before
our first
confessed
thought

we try
again
to fly
away

(Written August 21, 2020)

 

---

 

Sitting
On The
Front Steps

She began
to name
the wild cards
the marked
discarded
ones
that rested
under her
moving
hands

Something
Holy
might
still
come
running
down
these
streets
she said

Look
she said
just look
and don’t
turn away
from this

We are
in the
absence
of those
who fell
and keep
falling
out of
history
and
justice
she said

And that demands
the truth from all of us

(Written August 2, 2020)

 

---

 

Every Restless Hour
Is Bone-Deep

You find
yourself
on a city
bus
a small
brown
paper
lunch bag
in your lap

You look
down and
see you have
aged into
your father’s
hands
with his
scars and
weariness
visible

Forest after
forest
of buildings
and trees
slide by
the window

The color
of her
dress
has
stayed
with
you
as the
day
slows
into
night

And
in a
single
breath
you
see
your
young
mother
in a
doorway
calling
your name
down
the street

(Written July 24, 2020)

 

---

 

Coming Back
For Your Coat

What makes us
stop breathing

What decision
does the heart
make without
our consent

What is
any bullet
looking for
as it opens
the body

Someone is
lifting a
child
into the air
at the exact
moment
that someone
else is being
beaten to
the ground

We are
trying
to judge
how far
ahead
the
darkness
turns
into
light

An
entire life
may collapse
into a few
seconds of
violence
the day
easily
shifting
into shadow

The imbalance
of words
and thought
can become
a poem

I recall
each morning
the name of
this country
and look
for it

But I no longer know
where it is

(Written July 22, 2020)

 

---

 

Shadow
Policing

Your hands
will be
covered
with a text
written
from
hundreds
of years
of
blood

Your dark
uniform
will be a
lowering
sky
that can
be brought
down
hard
to the
sidewalk
without
remorse

There will
be days
that
your gun
will
almost
point
itself
at anyone
with Black
Skin
who you
sense
may make
the day
unsteady
in your
White
Imagination

After
you are
comfortable
with seeing
people of
color
as waiting
enemies

Every
violent /
fatal encounter
that you begin
or end
will be practice
for the next one

(Written July 18, 2020)

 

---

Allowing For Mistakes

We need
a new
prayer

A plain
spoken
prayer
without
adornments

One that
isn’t so
selfish
that it
forsakes us
on its way
to God

We need
a prayer
that protects
no one
from the
hard truth

A prayer
that has room
for all the
names of those
who will
die today
taken from
their loved
ones
by hatred
or alone
in the
I.C.U.

We need
a plain
spoken
prayer
that might
stop the
murders
of those
only trying
to live

We need
a new
prayer
that can
be called
out
in the
parking lot
behind the
market
or whispered
on the sidewalk
into loneliness

A prayer
without money
or power
attached to it

We need
a new
prayer
so plain
spoken
of who
we have
become
that it
wakes up
Heaven

(Written July 16, 2020)

 

---

If We Fail To Change
Nothing Will Change
for George Floyd

They already
had some
white
handcuffs
on your
Black life
before they
put you
face down
in the
standing
racist
water
And didn’t
we all
see
how
much
stillness
there was
in your
violent
death
And didn’t
they
think
that no one
could hear
your life
ending
with
a blue
forest
of bodies
falling
on you
And didn’t
they think
that no
white
person
would
ever
confess
to being
there
for any part
of the four
hundred years
and eight minutes
and forty six
seconds
that this
continuously
took place
And when
the white
policeman
with his
knee on
your neck
looked at
the seventeen
year old
young woman
filming him
and didn’t stop
pressing down
Wasn’t he showing
her / and us
that
Nothing
would
change
Nothing
would
change
Nothing
would
ever
change
And that
tomorrow
would simply
be the
next day

And this is
where we are now

And wasn’t he wrong
So profoundly wrong

(Written July 7, 2020)

 

---

Before Sleep

And in these
days of
painful witness
we call on the
hard earned
stupid grace
of our lives
to hold us
together

(Written July 6, 2020)

 

---

Another Floor

People
have been
brutalized
under the
tent of my
white skin
for centuries

This is
a continuing
narrative
that starts
on the
floor
of  a street
without
any air
on/off
to the side
of the
slippery
concrete of
a blood lined
sidewalk

My words
don’t want
the silence
of the page
anymore
they want to
do the
hard work
of these
waking days
right here
right now
until they change me
and this narrative
in a lasting way

(Written June 30, 2020)

 

---

The Full Length
Of These Days

1.
A small bird
flies down
from a rooftop
in Heaven
to simply
watch us
in silence

There is
no limit
to what
we will do
to avoid
his eye

2.
The police
have rubbed
their guns
smooth
with the
history of
our fear

3.
How do we sink
the empty
slave ships
still drifting
nearby
on this
white sea
of hate

(Written June 26, 2020)

 

---

Our Constitution

Upon
examination
this document
has been
found
to have
one side
written by
and for
white
men
and a
reverse side
that is
unwritten
for women
and people
of color
It has also been
understood
that this
shadow side
although
lacking rights
was still subject
to daily
reinterpretation
by the courts
and the
slave patrols
And this has
been known
to us all
ever since
the ink
first dried
under the
Crow’s wings
of this country

(Written on June 24, 2020)

 

---

A Prose Poem Response to Vice-President Mike Pence Who Finds Himself Unable to Utter the Words, Black Lives Matter

I share your white skin but still find myself able to read back along more than 400 years of American history to the first slave ship owned by white merchants that forcibly brought Africans onto this soil as enslaved people. And the knowledge of that enrages me to echo those words first said by African American activists, Black Lives Matter.

I share your white skin, Mr. Pence, but not your crushing ignorance of the lynchings, the beatings, the everyday humiliations that have been protected and enforced by our white legal system and endured by African Americans from that first day of enslavement to this day. And all of that disgusting history makes me able to say, Black Lives Matter.

Perhaps, Mr. Vice-President, your tongue fails you at the same point as your understanding of the real world fails you. You might try, Mr. Pence, the simple exercise of saying the names of some of the African Americans killed recently under the protection of police culture. These names will fit easily on a white 3 X 5 card carried in your suit pocket:
Michael Brown
Rayshard Brooks
Ahmaud Arbery
George Floyd
Eric Garner
Oscar Grant
Brionna Taylor
Freddie Gray
Treyvon Martin
Tamir Rice

Try saying these names which are only a very few of the hundreds of thousands of the named and unnamed victims of American racism. Say their names aloud each morning while looking in a mirror or sitting across from your wife and children or the president. Try learning about the pattern of attacks on other people that do not carry your skin color. After a short time as compared to our country’s history, you will know these listed names and the circumstances of their violent deaths by heart. Then, if you are able to acknowledge the complicity of our shared white history in all of this, you will find yourself able to say aloud with some measure of anger, understanding and hope, as I and so many others have come now to say, Black Lives Matter.

Black Lives Matter.

(Written June 20, 2020)

 

---

Stopping Here

I want to
wipe away
the white
chalk
that has
outlined
my body
for so long

I want to
turn off
the dangerous
noise
still living
under my
skin

These days
the water
in every glass
wants to
drown me
unless I
drink it
down

I cannot escape
myself

My tongue
wants to
keep lying
to me
until
I shut
my mouth
and listen
to where
these days
have brought me

There is
no place left
on any sidewalk
for me to hide

No place
left for me
to not see your
life ending
under the
white knee
of my accepted
justice

I want to stop everything here
right now
in the anguish of truth

(Written June 17, 2020)

 

---

Uncharted Waters

This is a poem
written on
the pieces
of a few days
typed in the
white margins
that enclose
my life

Each
grieving part
of every hour
has come now
to observe us
without pity

I hunger for
a justice
that will
include myself
in any and all
verdicts
of guilty

(Written June 15, 2020)

 

---

Along the White Road to Here

I want
to take
one step back
and then another
over lifetimes
until I arrive
at the first moment
that someone
with the color
of my white skin
created the racism
and cruelty
that was useful
to them and this country
from that day
to this day

I want to step back
to that first moment
and encounter
that white snake of skin
that matches my own
whiteness
and grind it into dust forever

(Written June 12, 2020)

 

---

In George Floyd’s
Burial Shroud

He rose
from his street grave
as a Prophet

His last words
became our first
words

“I can’t breathe”

And the
feeling is one
of terror
and suffocation
followed
by a rage
filled with history

We have raised
his burial shroud
above our individual lives
like a flag

And each day we
march under it
towards
this country and ourselves

(Written June 9, 2020)

Good to see this poem spreading online at http://expotera-ceo.blogspot.com/.

 

---

How Do We Loosen
This Violent Sadness
That Holds To Us

It might be midnight
when you pull over
to the shoulder of
the road to weep

Blinkers on
you can’t loosen your grip
on the wheel

You want to breathe
one long breath
for George Floyd
and Eric Garner
but can’t

You want to find
a road through these
unforgiving mountains
but can’t

On the radio
is someone else
whose name you
don’t yet know
but can see
on the ground
somewhere
in the past
or future

You want to
drive past this
always present
emptiness
but can’t

You used to sit
on the bench
next to the maple tree’s
green leaves

but those leaves
long ago turned blood red

You used to find
your way home
thinking it was easy

it seems impossible now

(Written June 7, 2020)

 

---

On Any Given Day
for George Floyd

What did you hear
as everything started
to fall away

maybe your mother
singing in the kitchen

and that is why you
called to her

wanting her
to know
that you couldn’t
take a full breath
with this country
pressing down
on your neck
and that you wanted
her to come into
the street
to pull them off of you
saying
Enough of that /Enough of that
go home to your mothers

And maybe
if the police
had called to their
own mothers
from behind
that squad car
maybe if they
had pleaded
that they needed
just another
eight minutes and
forty six seconds
to finish pushing your color
into the pavement
as they had
with so many others
Maybe then their mothers
would have come quickly
across the street
and knelt
beside them
and said
that the color
of anyone’s skin
is only the
shoreline of
their body
not the ocean
of what they
think and live
on any given day

And maybe
before they
could kill you
their mothers
would have
stopped them
saying that they had
already shamed them enough
with this brutality

And maybe their mothers
would have pulled them
off of you
saying
Who taught you to act
this way
Why are you comfortable
doing this

(Written June 6, 2020)

Najah Yousif first encountered this poem, “On Any Given Day,” here on this page and was moved to translate it into Arabic. It opens with a brief introduction of the poet.

كتب الشاعر بيو بيوسوليل عددا من القصائد تضامنا مع الملونين من أجل العدالة والمساواة وكبح استخدام العنف من قبل الشرطة ضدهم.. وقد قمت بترجمة هذه القصيدة وأرجو أن تروق لكم..

ماذا كنت تسمع
عندما بدا كل شيء ينهار
ربما صوت الوالدة
وهي تغني في المطبخ
وهذا ما جعلك تناديها
أردتها أن تعلم
أنك لا تستطيع التنفس
مع هذا البلد
الذي يضغط على رقبتك
أردتها أن تأتي للشارع
لتسحبهم عنك صارخة
يكفي هذا/ يكفي هذا
إذهبوا إلى منازلكم
إلى أمهاتكم
ربما لو أن الشرطة نادوا على أمهاتهم
من خلف سيارة الدورية
ربما لو إنهم التمسوا
انهم بحاجة إلى
ثمان دقائق واربعين ثانية
كي ينتهوا من دفع لونك على الرصيف
كما فعلوا مع الكثيرين
ربما عند ذاك
بسرعة تأتي أمهاتهم
عبر الشارع
يركعن بجانبهم، يقلن لهم
لون جلد أيًا كان
ما هو إلا شاطئ الجسد
ليس محيطا
بما يفكرون ويعيشون
في أي يوم
وقبل أن يقتلوك
ربما امهاتهم كانوا يوقفوهم
قائلين
لقد لحق العار بنا
بمثل هذه القساوه
ربما امهاتهم كانت تسحبهم عنك
قائلين
من علّمكم للتصرّف هكذا

لماذا تشعرون بالراحة

وانتم تفعلون هذا

 

---

In The Absence Of Reason
for George Floyd

I have no answer
to give
the cold wind
that cuts
across your body
except to fill
each empty word
that darkens
this shared sky
with small
poems
that might turn
the day around
at least enough
to protect you
from your own
country

(Written June 3, 2020)

 

---

A Summary of Guidelines
for Extrajudicial Police Street Sentencing of
African Americans
for George Floyd

The sentence
for running
through
a landscape
of inequality
is death

The sentence
for aggressively
not having
money
in public
is death

The sentence
for selling
individual
cigarettes
and otherwise
annoying
the order
of Western Civilization
is death

The sentence
for carrying a
sign
asking
for justice and
equal representation
is death

The sentence
for marching / demanding
human rights
is death

The sentence
for being seen
in public
expressing
personal outrage
is death

The sentence
for running away
from death
is death

The sentence
for observing
that we are
living in
a counterfeit
twenty dollar
country
is death

The sentence
for watching
all of this
take place
everyday
for four hundred
years
in an endless
almost airless
silence

is who the rest of us
have become

(Written June 2, 2020)

Please share the broadside of this poem widely.

---

 

Simply Breathing
for George Floyd

They told him to stop living
in his skin

They told him that his wings
would never grow back

but every time they threw him
to the ground

every time they crushed his
breath

He rose up again in spirit
and memory

He rose up on still another of the
sea of flags

That cover this country
like a shroud
from coast to coast

(Written May 29, 2020)

 

---

Speaking In Tongues

The Word
that means
breath
also means
falling without
pity and
is the same
Word
that means
the lack of even a
sheltering space on
the sidewalk
or a
plea to
the one
holding you
down
in the
impossible quiet
of unexpectedly
not breathing
and that is the
only Word
that mimics
the sound
of the oars
of a rowboat
pulling away
from the
shore of
a country
that has
killed people
that you loved
and that Word
in some
places
also
means
imprisonment or
beatings
maybe death
depending
on the stress
put on the
last syllable
of one’s
unsaid
confession
which is
filled with
Words
that mean
lying or
enemy of the
state
or when
linked to the
internal borders
of racism
or when
coupled with
the Words
for corruption
means
that the
front door
was on fire

even before you got there

(Written May 27, 2020)

 

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Find other broadsides at BROADSIDES AND PRINTS.