Mob Massacre, East St. Louis, Illinois (1917)
(The Land of Lincoln)
The beast must come to feast
within the atmospherics of hell
placed in hate.
Motions in the night,
like oil seeping through
guardian palisades.
In this universe,
we do not know where evil begins
or where it ends.
The law itself,
with masked-over majesty,
covered and cowering,
shivering in skin-toned shadows.
Can there be an opiate
more powerful than hate?
And we know,
when placed together,
fire consumes oil.
Oh, to be seared between two fires.
One greater than the other,
with either extinguishing mortality.
Oh, how dear the loss
with the death of children’s voices.
Oh, how mighty the fire found in torment.
The hand of death slaps
at chops in the river.
And there are those who sink
because they rise no more.
Can there be a raft of forbearance
that braves these waves?
Is there capacity to channel our tears into streams,
with more glisten than light,
across the Cahokia Creek.
Flowing as far
as sea and tide can take.
What if stars are just mementos of tear drops
or scatterings of rain drops,
yet to fall.
We pray until there are no more stars,
or blissfully listless clouds.
And what if peace is only possible
if poured down from clouds
already stained by crimson contagion
of fuming new blazes?
Would the drum sound in such thunder
contain the actual beat of a storm,
hot steamed and ready for battle?
Are we to be guarded over only by angels?
After all, they too own not a thing,
and have only the labor in their hands.
The God of the helpless
is the same as the God of the able.
Should our most noble purpose
be to brush away life’s lies
as if they were flies?
Though our lives are threadbare,
we did busy our hands with the needle of repair.
The complex compress of freedom
is laid hot against our skin,
blistering the hopes of generations past.
With the toughness impressed in us,
we will meet the agony,
for God has made us powerful people
for this night and time.
Watching the expansive, blue shawl of day
smolder as it
slips over the shoulders
of a blackened, tormented night.
As black as the pencilings of midnight
etched in the outcropping of smoky colors
drawn and grayed out.
For the night-blooming crocus
opens its lips to the moon,
yet shuts them tight against the morn.
Too soon, the death in pattering footsteps,
never to be again.
And clays of mortality attempt to mold those
who remain stuck to the shore,
among flashing pocketknives.
The back and forthness batted by
the night against the day
with the sound of cobblestones
crashing through skulls.
A city in the dialects of iniquity,
bounded by the stalking horse of municipality.
We draft up pain from the quiet dell in the throat,
swish it around in the mouth,
before spitting it out.
The beast will have its feast
and roar in the mouth of the mob.
Before Tulsa (1921) there was the massacre in the city of East St. Louis, likely equal in the loss of life and certainly equal in brutality.