Selective Grief

set the clocks west

the new daylight savings

where red, white, and blue 

become the new whiteface

since lions draw more tears 

than the corpse of a black child

and Beirut is an abandoned building

a haunted house forgotten 

and left barren

while Paris is wined and dined

having turned our eyes to the bells that chimed

and set the clocks westward

ticking the eyes away from marginalized bodies

neocolonial violence in the name of selective grief

and the grief we've carefully chosen

is male, tick

is cisgender, tick

is white, tick

when clocks chime of gay marriage and wedding cake

another transgender corpse is a sponge

soaked with the soap of blood and forget

the body count of neglect

but we're 'celebrated' in retrospect

when we're dead

and our voices gone

and our flailing arms still

and our corpse-like-sponges 

are used to wash the streets

and sweep the detritus away

we hear the battle cry

"all lives matter"

really?

if that were true

we'd expect to see Facebook safety checks 

for every city

we'd expect a candle lit for
every transbody, tock

every brown body, tock

every woman's body, tock
but no
we're

mashed in the cogs of your eurocentric clocks

your patriarchal timepieces

but no

we've learned that "all lives" do not matter

Paris is a good example of that

mass outrage and grief for the European city

wailing and gnashing of teeth for white bodies

and today I watch a white man explain to a black woman

why Beirut deserved what happened to them

because brown bodies do not matter

and what a paltry sacrifice a brown body is

if the world is to be rid of Islam

so his Islamophobia teaches that

brown lives do not matter

and as time drags itself

up the hill of marginalized corpses

so a white man can pin his grief to the summit
where he can build his belltower

and sing to the chimes

of what a fucking victim he is

-o0o-