Does it cost more to die on Friday night?
You know, overtime for the ambulance, emergency
Room, pathologist, mortician, or is there
A Friday night special for folks from the slum
Free bullets if you grab a taser and flee
Free call to my baby mama to let her know I died running

Free obits in the morning paper so your friends
Remember who you were and how you went
Do the dead deserve their brief moment of notoriety?
Can some cop embalm my memory in amber taser light
Or will my life somehow matter, somehow be more
Than just another forgotten lynching, another news cycle

2 thoughts on “Rayshard Recalls by Charles Watts

  1. Your writing provokes thinking here. I like the raw emotion of your voice and use of questions, which are effective. Your repetition of the word “free” is also effective and connects to “lynching.” Your last two lines are powerful! I believe that every life matter, Charles. Well written. Your poem almost seems like a song.

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