O.J. Simpson Has A Good Day

Look at it like this.
In the meat yard of the hate filled human heart
The dogs lay down satisfied for another year

So don’t tell me I didn’t give something back
To my own people and to the whole country as well..
Think how those black women stood up
Think how they cheered when they heard
Don’t you know they get thirsty for blood
Same as some of you with your rope and chains?

It was the way she walked
The long blond braid flooding down the spine
Carrying away the mind.
There’s no deeper source of envy, even money,
Than a physical success like that.
So perfectly doomed, knowing she had been picked out
And you think I don’t hear the voice yet
Clinging to the tatters of my soul
As Lazarus might have heard
Unwinding in his tomb
Demanding more and more trickery.

You think I don’t go back to the spot
My hand raised in the screaming dark
Even with my mind away at the beach
And on a good day like this?

© Jo Neace Krauce

Commentary:

I had the feeling immediately after the O.J. trial that Nicole Brown Simpson had become a sacrificial object made to the deity of revenge between black and white in this country, that somehow her murder and O.J.'s acquittal evened the score in many black people's minds. Shortly thereafter, I happened to be travelling in a largely black community of Philadelphia and was struck by the settled quality of the inhabitants. It was astounding. They seemed to look at me and my friends with an almost peaceful silence, as if, as I sometimes say, "the dogs of hate had laid down."