Is My Neck Next? (A poem)

By: Desir’ee Neal (Desi)  

THE WORLDS A SCARY PLACE WHEN YOU CANT SEEM TO BREATH

SO WHEN I ASK YOU TO GET OFF MY NECK, 

It’s a substitute for the phrase  “you’re killing me”

The blood steaming from his nose should have been enough, but then again that was from a prior engagement where you felt you had to rough him up 

the chanting  between the the minute you arrived and the silence between when you left, she be a sign that his body had ran out of breath and yet you seem to not give a f*ck

You presume, to kill because you wanna bring justice to the world over what appears to be a fake $20 BILL

Because, you’ll do anything to have one less black in the world, and it’s getting to the point where you don’t care if it’s a boy or a  girl. 

And one filled with ignorance might decide to   ask, well why don’t  you just say that? 

But my question is, shouldn’t a  highly trained figure of the law be able to see when a fellow human being can’t breath, 

shouldn’t they be able to know that  pinning your knee on a throat, is like the equivalence to a modern day death row. 

But then again nvm, a highly trained cop would know that pinning a knee on a neck is unethical and that it’s never been taught in the books 

It’s those same highly trained cops who instead of calling a 10-43, rather call a 10-91 because it’s more fun to overlook

And I never understood why 5 cop cars were needed to take down one black man, maybe because it’s the thrill. The thrill to no that Rosa can’t help him escape now. The thrill that gives you the license to kill.Knowing that when they tell him to get to the ground, he can’t scream back put the guns down.

It’s crazy, it feels as though the world is going insane. But until the system the world has built is broke, the relationship between cops and blacks wont change

Hi, My name is Desir’ee Neal and I am 16 years old. I am a singer, song writer, and a poet. With the recent events occurring around the topic of  police brutality I have been inspired to use my gifts to spread awareness. The name of the poem you’ll be reading is: “Is My Neck Next”. It is a thought provoking poem that gives true insight of not only what happened with George Floyd but also what many other African Americans experience within the broken justice system. In order to fix the American justice system, we need to fix the relationship between cops and African Americans. Not only does this system affect me as a young African American female, this broken system affects the world.