Dear Police Officer,
How do you feel?
Do you feel?
Are you scared to feel
Being empathetic with apathetic tendencies
Targeting the community you serve like a devil’s residency
How do you sleep?
Do you see the lights in your head?
Blistering visions of your rights taken away, causing dread
The red and blue shining lights on bodies
Those that you’ve never met but are of same flesh and blood
Do you try?
Try to change what you see?
Or do you turn blind eyes
Bleach the scene to cover it up
Hiding your scars with fading paint
Though the pasty white marks show through
Are you an alien?
Do you bleed the same way we do?
Cause you must be trying to see what red blood looks like
I guess this is the easiest way to probe us
Find us out and see underneath
Why don’t we flip the script
Do you have anxiety?
No, not when you order a McDonald’s breakfast meal and complain that you only got the coffee
Or try to return an item that’s non-refundable and get scared to break out into un-needed fight choreography
Do you truly feel anxious?
Doing tasks that you’ve found scary I guess
Holding a toy gun, eating skittles, being who you are and just stunned
being in your apartment, driving, having a mental illness, is that fun for you?
Are you anxious yet?
Cause I don’t think you are
Is us being in the system helping your case
Being the minority in the majority again
Sadly taking your problems and having to carry them on their backs
Lastly
Can you look in a mirror
And say to yourself
“What I do isn’t policing
It’s fear mongering
Taking over places and money
Causing suffering while I’m conquering
Working to not kill a specific person for no reason isn’t the goal
And I no longer want to perpetuate and assassinate
Those who don’t look like me
And increase their mortality rate
Not just for empty applause
But for truthful justice by law”
Or do you think that statement is a mirage
Today’s poem, “Dear Police Officer” is brought to you by bluapple poet Cordell Jones, a rising senior from Miramar HS. He says that this piece was inspired by a workshop hosted by bluapple and that it is intended as a letter addressed to the cop or cops that “fit the bill” he paints in his poem. #JournalingForJustice
