Black Lives Matter
I Hear Them in the Streets
A story about a poem
I recently enrolled in a Seth Godin writing course. It cost over $300 so I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it or not. But… Seth Godin, am I right? Right now, it’s the first week of class and honestly, I’m not feeling it. The homepage and navigation are clunky. The website is, eh. But if you know Seth Godin, one of the rules of the page is to show up everyday, drip by drip.
So I had to write something. I said in my introduction that there were two things I wanted to write about over the course. One being the NBA. And two, poetry about love.
It was late tonight and I didn’t have the energy to write about the NBA. So I decided to sit down and write a poem, easy enough, right? I decided to write a poem about love, ooey, gooey love.
But as I wrote a poem about love… something else came out.
I wanted to write a poem about love, but nothing did come out You see, my brothers are in the streets and dying, we barely hear them shout
But oh it’s getting louder now, the protest down the street I can hear the men and women, walking to the beat
Chants of Black Lives Matter Chants of hope and change Will things be different this time Is today finally that day?
No, it’s taken years to get this far And many more ahead How much noise needs to be made So others don’t end up dead
Drip by drip, day by day We’ll see the change, it’s coming Just listen to the streets, they’re speaking The marching and the drumming
I can hear it louder now Change is on the way But you may have to lose some privilege There’s always a price to pay
I wanted to write a poem about love I guess something came out You see, my brothers are in the streets and marching I can hear them shout
Turns out, it was about love after all. Just not the type of love I thought I’d be writing about. Not that ooey gooey kind of love but that righteous, justice-seeking kind of love.
Because that’s where my heart is at right now. It’s with the people. It’s with those fighting for justice and equality. They have my heart, they have my love, and now, they have my poems.
