Poem: I Can't Breathe

 

I Can’t Breathe

Wildfires rage across the west.

A black man attempts to buy a package of 

Cigarettes but the cashier suspects

The twenty-dollar bill is counterfeit.

The fires are a bigger problem than

Simple forest management and

We need to work to stop climate change

Say’s an expert to the president

who replies,

I don’t think science knows.

The police are called and they put 

Their knee on the man

Who attempted to buy cigarettes.

He says, I can’t breathe.

But they ignore him and he died

And the fires rage on

And the smoke continues

While disease ravages the land

And the counterfeit isn’t a twenty-dollar bill

Or any of us who say,

I can’t breathe.

September 2020

About This Poem

I wrote this shortly after the death of George Floyd. We were also engulfed in smoke from wildfires here, so the sense of suffocating was overwhelming with the news of Floyd's death, the willful ignorance of climate science from the administration and the constant fear from the pandemic. You can see all of that in this poem. I also think we are already repeating some of the state brutality against citizens and I am amazed we let it happen again, just as I am heartened by the public response. The photo is on Kootenay Lake in British Columbia this past September when we were, again, suffocating in wildfire smoke. 

(This is a little more political than usual, but I think times call for it.)