Take Your Knees Off My Neck, I Can't Breathe! In Memory Of George Floyd Poem by Stephen Oduware

Take your knees off my neck!
What happened? Why am I being harassed?
Concatenated fraternity of supremacy!
What is white? What is black? A term relative as no meaning!
Black is white, white is black, good is black, bad is white - a paradigm of reversal?
Let truth be true - we are first humans and nothing less, your knees still suffocates me
I can't breathe!

Take your knees off my neck
The world will be a better place if we breathe together!
There's no one superior over the other!
There's no conqueror, there's no vanquished, there's no winner
Hate is bias, it has stifled every sense of reasoning and logic
Take your knees off my neck, I can't breathe!

I can't breathe - not because my lungs are frail
Asphyxiated! Not because I am confined in a vacuum
Your knees dig deep into my neck - I can't breathe!
Made a plea - let me breathe a second
But your knees dug even harder till you felt no pulse
Smothering like a fire extinguished - you took my breathe with your knees
I can't breathe!

Peace is suppressive, Justice is equity
The Human RACE matters - no one above the other
Justice must be served - for others to breathe
Let civil be civil and crime be crime
Let hate be hate and hate be crime
Our children are watching - the future is here!
This madness must STOP!
Your knees have done the harm, I can't breathe!