He woke to orange behind closed eyes smell of may morning a Saturday morning sunrise removed himself from between clean sheets & went out and got the news sitting at the table ready to drink some juice starting flipping through Headlines: War - Famine - Hunger - Ethnic Cleansing - Local news: Gang fights - Robbery - Weather Legal ads: Get out of Jail free - Do you own Abandoned Property Editorial: We are the World - there's no difference between us the US and Them - Obituary:
STOP
And there was Corey - Corey Corrival one of his first friends - the first black kid he ever knew two years older but a year behind in school 9 years old he jumps off a 6 foot wall with a football helmet and a yellow girls banana seated bike - he remembers how he didn't cry - much - pictures of him dredge up his 8th birthday party Corey with his huge grin and AFRO "Get the heck outta here Corey and play with your nice friend - your drivin momma crazy! ...and bring that damn dog with you." Eatin up on their third floor a whole neighborhood of three deckers livin across the street from one another both father-less both their mothers on welfare and he's sitting at the table:
Bachelors Degree on the wall new car in the driveway making more money than his mother ever did & she got off welfare as soon as he could go to school and Corey's... ...Corey's dead
Over a knife and a pockett fulla crack and that could have been him. Except he moved out of that neighborhood Once in High School he saw Corey swinging in a park ...didn't say hi or wave or nod ...just looked at each other from 50 feet Corey was a drop out & he was scared - Donny said he just got out of juvie for handcuffing a girl to those swings and rapping her Yeah - he was scared of him - Corey probably thought he was stuck up - a bigot or a snob - like most of the rest of the town Later in College his Mom heard Corey was back in Jail and now it's over ten years since he saw you last and he's dead one more friend outlived - If he would call a rapist his friend. But when he knew Corey - he was his friend And that's the only way he ever knew him So Yeah - he and Corey were friends
He didn't even know the kid who could have done that & A couple of articles back Judge Thompson one of two black judges in the State - the only woman - related a story about when she heard two cases in a row one a group of white boys staying in a vacation home the other: three out of state Black students driving to Boston the white boys decided to break into their neighbors houses and steal their TV's & stereos for fun the police's suggested sentence: 1 year continuance without finding - community service - and "pay back your neighbors"
"Boys will be boys" & "We don't want to ruin the rest of their lives"
The three black kids - pulled over for fitting a profile: young and "driving while black"
& having a knife in their car "all 3 were ready to plead guilty to possession of a knife"
up to 1 year in Jail and a thousand dollar fine each even though having a knife in your console is not carrying a concealed weapon.
There's racial disparity in the judicial system the workplace health care almost everywhere
and he'll never really know what happened to Corey - how it felt for him to die - how it felt to be him - how it was to live his way - how it was for him to die that way - He'll never know how it felt to be black - And he'll never pretend to He sympathizes - realizes the wrongs (most of the time) he even cried morning tears for a little while and he thinks he does his part treats everyone the same but he knows no one is
not really
say's "Right now there is nothing on this planet that isn't disliked by something else - and how am I supposed to change that?... ...right now opposition is natural ...hunger is natural ...hate - war - atrocity - gangs - Robberies! ...All are natural! It's the way life is..." so He reads on - "A Black Man has a 28.5% chance of going to prison. A White man - 4.4%..." Say's "Now that's not natural." Puts down the paper - sighs "Corey's dead" and gets another juice
sits back down - thinks to himself but doesn't say it
"i wish someone would tell me what I can do"
