letshuggiespeak:

Trayvon Martin

I heard your chest stared down the barrel of gun some time ago,

And your body is now sunken into the earth.

Several months later, your memory still resonates on the hearts and mouths of the world.

I didn’t know you but I often wonder if you could feel my heart break at the mentioning of you;

If you could see how the world has made you into a household name not even days after you left us.

This morning Trayvon, I realized a piece of me died with you;

And that when you descended into the ground you drug a part of the American dream down with you.

You hadn’t even began to taste life yet, your birthday hadn’t had time to expire before you did,

And I hurt because of it.

But I think it hurts God the most that we are dying prematurely every day.

That death finds us before things like love ever does; I want you to know that we broke when you did.

We’ve written enough poems to educate the world,

Faced it with our bodies armored in hoodies.

With our facebooks and twitters shrined with pictures and prayers

Skittles and Arizona’s never tasted so bitter to us.

We are still trying to find answers in the soil your blood was wasted on.

We’ve called you and your family’s name out over pulpits and dinner tables.

We’ve seen your mother’s hurt in our own mother’s faces, to lose a child is to sever the soul.

In a matter of months your death has become the 9/11 of the average household. Where do we go from here?

I don’t want anger to cloud my desire to fall on my knees and pray but this morning I clenched my fist.

This morning I thought of you and called out the name of Jade Hannah a young soul who left before you.

I thought of Michael Haynes who unfortunately left after you and my faith has diminished.

It seems as though the world is performing acts of genocide on its future, and I wonder if it knows how that in turn makes it suicidal.

If I’ve learned nothing from your death Trayvon, I have learned that we all hurt.

That race and religion don’t substitute the fact that we all cry when a soul is lost,

And instead of fighting to keep hope alive we have shoved it in our closets of hatred and prejudice

Reviving the skeletons of our forefathers.

Trayvon Martin

I woke up this morning to war with the pain that I feel every time I read your name in a newspaper or any other young person’s name for that matter.

 And I wrote this poem to silence the voice in my head that’s telling me to walk around in fear of enjoying my youth, of just being a kid.

After all, you were just hungry, weren’t you?