The Business of Human Tragedy

A Poem

8:01, here they come storming down the street to enforce a curfew with taser guns and batons hand-to-hand combat with those kneeling Plucking people off the ground who weren’t making a sound Tear gas firing, police conspiring to somehow enjoy the business of human tragedy

It’s a protest by police of a peaceful protest, but their protest is aggressive and retaliatory and never conciliatory when the real protest is about racism and oppression and outright white supremacy and they wonder why people are so mad and to combat the burning world they do it again and again and again knowing full well that someone will record it but they don’t care and that’s how bad it is

An army descending on the capital to prevent a country from expressing themselves based on visual evidence of extreme prejudice and murder and complicity Those that enlisted to fight for our country are now being called upon to fight our country and somewhere there is a room full of white people nodding their heads and saying, yes, we need more of this so we rush to the streets to say Stop This Madness and are met with the business of human tragedy

Do you ever wonder what goes through the mind of someone with a badge, who at 8:01, charges after a crowd of peaceful people, stuns them, shuns them, guns drawn as if a cardboard sign is a weapon and hands-up is a sign of fists-up? Do you ever wonder what their friends think or their partners or their kids when they see them in full riot gear, chasing a person down who was just standing on the street and beating them, hog-tying them and then feeling proud for serving their district?

Kneeling one day, tear gas the next Calling to come here, rubber bullets to the head As if somehow this is now a video game Assaulting and detaining and arresting health care workers and journalists even knowing that every person has a phone in their hand and that’s how pompous and outrageous it is that even with a world under surveillance there are those that still believe they are above the law Choking the life out of another black man Spraying bullets into another black woman and then going on with their day is the very definition of the business of human tragedy

This poem was inspired by a passage in the book of poetry, Bastards of the Reagan Era by Reginald Dwayne Betts. I find myself highlighting words or passages that move me every time I read, no matter what I am reading. When I find the highlight that projects to a poem, I don’t read the source again before I write, I just allow the nerve to be touched. And then I spill my words.

A snippet from page 29 of the multi-part poem, Bastards of the Reagan Era — VII. Security of the First World, where I got my inspiration:

But see he didn’t say that, and so what Does this say about America? So many folks with control over our Bodies. A public defender once explained It perfect. He told me what we all know, Said this is the business of human tragedy.

© Jonathan Greene 2020

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