I Can’t Breathe…

-          Manprasad Subba

George,

the three words you laboriously uttered

before you ceased to be  

beneath the avalanche of snow-white knee,

now thundering in the sky of America and everywhere,

loudly echoing even in the southern hemisphere --

I Can’t Breathe…

And the streets in chorus are singing the dirge-

I can’t breathe… I can’t breathe…

The difference between your neck and his knee ---

your neck was black and all the time throbbing with fervor  

while his knee weighed down as hard and cold as white boulder.

Your blackness shone like a smooth black stone image from antiquity

while under the cover of his whiteness

some blackest designs were lurking.

His white skin is not as white as your teeth

that would shine bright whenever you grinned,  

nor as much white as your bones under the black skin,

nor as white as the sclera of your eyes.

O Big Floyd,

we’d seen all your soul’s brightness

when you vigorously sang rap in Houston.

You rapped in colourless voice

gushing out through the same throat

that the cop’s white boulder knee pinned down.

Today

every single word in black ink says -

if the whiteness of avalanche

falls so crushingly on the neck of time

I can’t breathe ..

And the words have come out of the confinements of the books

rallying round you, O George Floyd,

singing dirge in chorus – I can’t breathe…