Samaritan
By Dee Allen.
Anyone else
Would’ve left that Far Right
Reactionary sprawled on the concrete
To bleed out, suffer in his
Paroxysms of serious hurt, receive
Disaster of the steel-toed kind.
But not you.
The Good Samaritan
Reflex kicked in,
Wouldn’t let you
Abandon someone in need of help.
Distinctions such as
“Friend” and “foe” didn’t matter.
Whom you saw laying at your feet
Wasn’t an “enemy.”
Just an injured man.
So you lifted him in your arms,
Slung him over your shoulder
Like a heavy sack of laundry,
Carried him in a firefighter’s hold
With a cordon of protection around you,
Your four comrades had your back,
Moving past a raging crowd
And riot-cops
With the boisterous sounds
Of the inner-city battleground
In both of your ears—
Football songs, national anthem,
Protest chants, flares and smoke grenades—
Maybe you thought
One dead
White man
Wasn’t going to bring back
One dead
Black man
In Minneapolis,
One dead
Black woman
In Louisville,
One dead
Black man
In a Wendy’s© parking lot in Atlanta,
Martyrs from American
Racial flashpoints—
Maybe you thought
That injured man’s
Life was more worthy of salvation
Than stone monuments to previous wars,
Winston Churchill’s statue
And the Cenotaph.
Descriptions such as
“Hero” didn’t matter either.
You’re just a man protecting
A neck that wasn’t your own
And you wanted
Equality, right that minute,
For your children,
For your grandchildren,
For the generations ahead,
For England and troubled America,
If we can get past
Misunderstanding and factions. Brother,
I wish I had
Your Good Samaritan
Resolve.
[For Patrick Hutchinson]
[Inspired by a photograph by Dylan Martinez from the international news service Reuters.]
Dee Allen. is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. He has been active in creative writing and spoken word since the early 1990s. Dee is the author of seven books: Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater, and Skeletal Black, all from POOR Press; Elohi Unitsi [pronounced: Ell-oh-ee Oo-nee-chee] from Conviction 2 Change Publishing; Rusty Gallows: Passages Against Hate from Vagabond Books; and Plans from Nomadic Press. He also has multitudes of anthology appearances under his figurative belt.
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