Jayland Walker, We Hardly Knew Ye (But What the F*ck Is New?)

Jayland Walker, We Hardly Knew Ye (But What the F*ck Is New?)
by John Kendall Hawkins

George Floyd went into a grocery store in Middle America, you know, somewhere like Minneapolis. Mm hmm. Went into a little corner store to purchase some cigarettes. With purportedly a counterfeit $20 bill. I mean, and is literally unable to leave that store without losing his life. I mean, it's, it's, it's almost incomprehensible.
- James Henry Harris, interview with author, June 2022.

I don't keep track
as many do
of all the N-words who go down
by police force every day.
I don't have that kind of elephantine memory.

.

The latest elephant in the room
to see his tusks taken in the dark
(they're real glowy when they smile)
when no one was looking, not really looking,
was Jayland Walker, Akron, Ohio.

.

Who gives a sh*t
what he was doing beforehand?
Even if he had been the notorious big
Joseph Kony, N-word on the run,
bustin caps upside ass throughout south central Africa,
swarmed by America's army of children on line,
he didn't merit 80 fired-up cracker bullets in his back,
the magic bullets of Chauvinist pigs,
one bellowing so fuckin loud and crazy
you'd run, too, even if you were just a white word,
greased lightning in hip-hop high tops, as it were.

.

After the TET offensive was over and Jayland lay dead
in the mud created by his blood
the master narrative began its auto-stitch
and the tee-shirts were out marching in infinite rage
yelling hell no we won't go or de-fund the po-lice
It doesn't matter. Nobody listens to N-words.

.

We say N-word now, instead of the other thing,
to be polite and politically correct,
but we mean the other and we're just taking cover.
Also, it shows who's in control of the narrative.
I hate The Mighty Whitey.
And f*ck the Hemingway Hero, while were at it.
Disgrace under pressure.
Bang.

.

Hero send-offs.
Bonnie and Clyde took 50 hits combined in the end
but they was armed
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid died
in a handsome fusillade of grinning bullets, two white picket smiles.
Remember The Sting, and how Scott Joplin's ragtime
was popularized again, and Marvin Hamlisch made
lots of money honoring Joplin's legacy?
I do.
I'm white.
Ragtime.

.

But I don't remember all the Black folks who were killed last year.
There should be a wall built.
Like the Vietnam Memorial designed by an Ohioan.
All the saps who died for the noble cause.
More firecrackers.
A Great Wall that stretches hundreds of miles
A wall of fallen N-word names that is the southern border
of our collective white consciousness
to be parsed by Mexican "jumping beans"
eager to be assimilatos in the Great Replacement ahead
of one victim with another,
M-words pinch-hitting for N-words,
Ind'gens looking on sheepishly,
but that could be the firewater talking:
We'll have to see how Harjo weighs in.
Who the f*ck is Harjo?
The Poet Laureate, a**hole.

.

Jayland Walker, RIP.
Ripped to pieces from behind
by a bellow beast predator squad.
Don't bother remembering his name.
There'll be a new inscription in a day or two.
And one day, if we last that long,
that southern Great Wall we build
will be a minotaur's maze that stretches and twists
throughout every town and city in the country
and Mighty Whitey will be chased
by his own self-consuming hypocrisy.
When fighting monsters, don't become one.
If you don't fight the monster, then you are the monster.
Double binds by Duncan Hines.

.

And that concludes this transmission of the emergency broadcast system.
Had this been an actual emergency.
We will now return control of your "TV" to the outer limits.
(Dig the antennae.)