In Need of Peace

A poem inspired by my work in the juvenile justice system

They call us crazy

Just cuz they can’t see

The system’s working

To make us crazy

Ten years on zoloft

Cops still patrol us

CBT therapy for OCD

world still feels hopeless

Quarantine’s the end of life as they know it

now jobless, hungry, and poor and

indoors feelin’ unimportant

That's life as we’ve always known it

Karens always been informants

Crocodile tears as adornment

Right up the street, Santa Clarita

There's kids in cages

Young girls, pigtails and braces

She’s 13 and in jail, 13 and in hell

Two Black officers dragged that

Black girl down the concrete

Held her down, locked her up

walked back, wiping off their handcuffs

“Why you doing that? Did she bleed?”

“Nah, they’re just dirty. They touched the wildebeest”

Exercising impunity,

Did this all in front of me

Acting as if when he leaves

White police would treat HIM any differently

I close my eyes and hear the screams

cant sleep can’t sleep can’t sleep

Insomnia? or in need of peace?

Note from the author: I am a proponent of mental health destigmatization, education, and accessible access to care. But the traumas of being Black in America cannot be solely attributed to chemical imbalances, nor can they be remedied through medical means alone.

Sometimes it is the world itself that is sick. We’re just trying to make it through alive.