The George Floyd Warranty

Caveat Emptor
The boogeyman
May steal your winks
Father Time
May take your memory of
Eight minutes
And forty six seconds
The invisible man
May steal your focus
But to steal something
That was sold
Is an issue of values

So what’s it mean to you

Face masks
And grocery baths
Shelter in place
Of recent memory
Unless you wanna
Breonna Ahmaud
About it
The year of
Clear vision
Gave us much more
To see
About ourselves
About the society
We were creating
About the stuff
We claimed to be

And it was unattractive
Attempting to gain
Traction for
Humanity
Divisive eyes
Where one
Looks in the mirror
While the other
Looks for a weapon
To challenge
Who is lookin back

So what’s it mean to you

Lose a job
Lose a loved one
Lose a mask
Lose your breath
You can’t get that back
Try and inhale
The beguiling air
Lose your grip
In a moment
Of despair
If you were there
How could you forget
Essential workers
The weeping
The pacing
Not sleeping
Nowhere to escape
The constricted feeling
The physical
Not real
The invisible
Deceiving
The covered faces
Only seeing

So what’s it mean to your breathing

In and out
We forget
A trauma response
Until we recall
What had been done
Stand back
Official police business
The controlled
Hatred
The memes
“You telling me
A nigger
With a nose that big
Couldn’t breathe”
Lines you cannot cross
Dividing a life
And a loss
From the equation
Of a civil servant
Spot promoted
To boss of a point
Being proven
About authority
And the cost
Of inhumane treatment
And that point would be lost
On a blue life mattering
And not a Black man
Struggling
And not a Black father
Struggling
And not a Black son
Appealing to his mother
To protect and serve
His transition
From the living

So what’s it mean to you

No protest
Can save him
No unrest
Can claim him
No progress
Can erase him
The world
Was George Floyd
2020 George Floyd
The Black debate
From cultural
Heavyweights
Malcolm and Martin
Concerning the existence
Of a conscience
Manifesting
From sea to shining sea
Perhaps in purple mountains
Majesty
Folklore to front pages
Was George Floyd
And still it had to be asked
Which should have been our
First clue to genuine feelings
And still it had to be asked
If this country
Even cared
And not in the places
Peacefully protesting
Getting into good trouble
But the harbors of hatred
And the great plain
Main streets
Once known as
Sundown towns
Somehow George Floyd
Never died there
Because he never lived there
And if he did
He was as noteworthy
As a fly
Easily swatted away
More import paid
To the heat of the day
When the news did break
The cynicism
Took George’s place
Did he
Do the right thing
Or get in the way
Of this land belonging
To pure old fashioned hate

So what’s it mean to you

Caveat emptor
Buyer beware
The stories we heard next
Were on par
With viral air
Careful what you
Breathe in
You can’t see
What is there
Announcing
What sounds like
Good intentions
To heralded fanfare
Corporate responses
But wait
Because smell
And sound
Both carry on the air
But only one
Sometimes
Comes from a derrière

So what’s it matter to you

Oh the lofty promises
The pledges
The flair
The not going backwards
The commitments
Hot air
A talking point
To fish for opportunity
Exploit a dead man
For revenue
Promotional necromancy
Vampire initiatives
Financial sympathy
Emotional apathy
Not for the man
But a bidding war
To keep bottom lines
Relevant
Those people
Sure like to spend
And it may cost too much
To have a boycott again
Again for the coin
Again
Not for the man

So what’s it matter for news

Old money laughed
A man was lynched today
You could picket
That headline from
Any balance sheet
Charting their history
Being responsive
Is a young company’s game
Something about how
Black people dying
Being embedded
In their name
Only stirred their PR
To disengage any shame
Instead
They looked at how many
Quarters it would cost
To completely
Forget his name

So what’s it matter to you

And if you made it
This far
It bears saying that
That the time it took to read this
George Floyd had approximately
Three minutes remaining
A most inhumane
Displaying of systems
Remaining
To view authority
As unapproachable
While life
Is being taken
We were all disgusted
Speechless
At power forcibly
Suffocating
A human being
And the money
Saw a moment
To start saying
Any ole thing
To keep their property
From swaying into
The gaze of looters
And the inherited pain
Of hating
Being hated
No please to destruction
An idea of saving
DEI would be applied
Like one band-aid
On a sick herd
Of nameless faces
An idea of saving
Revenue
To ironically remain
In the black
To not be seen
As passively a key
To the system of this attack
To escape
The dreaded morality
Of facts
Say anything in a year
Where the news had no
Alternate track
But to dot the lines
To any power that lead
To where we were at
And the money
Immediately began
To hand wring
And grapple with this
George Floyd thing
Not for the man
Something to say
To keep the customers
In line
Supply some demands
Sharp as fork tines
To stab at a narrative
That his death
Would be fine
So long as
Some diverse hires
Made the headlines

So what’s it matter to truth

A warranty is a business decision
A plan for obsolescence
Beyond the transaction’s commission
Equivalent to extending a hand
To indicate care
Which rings disingenuous
When the actions
To resolve
What has malfunctioned
Are actually right there
The coverage of a warranty
Is an agreement and a plan
If anything becomes broken
We can always
For a limited time only
Work together
To restore it again
Unless what was broken
Was a whole man
Unless what was broken
Must be replaced
New actions are required
To assess
What could fit in that place
The George Floyd Warranty
Had illuminated
Again
That the fix was cash flow
And only for them
To fine print
The transaction’s commission
To bring your business
Back here again
We will tell you
We will sell you
Literally anything
To sheep you
From straying
Away from our brand

So what’s it martyr to you

I mean I had no idea
That race could be
Outgrown
Like a skin shed
Upon the chameleon
Successfully blending in
I mean I had no idea
The future was here
Like an alarm set
To dismantle the gears
Of progress
I mean I had no idea
That the path we would
Not stray from
To end forever
Colonizing natural selection
Could so easily be
Retrod in one election
So much force
So many commitments
Once employed
To make a difference
CEOs making a stand
For their board of directors
To get a handle on
A chance
To garner likes
From defectors
And rebrand their
Money dance
To the beats
Of passionate chants
To do better
And it was sad how badly
They wanted to show
What we already knew
You people mean as much
As a small hole in our boat
So long as we
Passage your money
To float to us
And how do we know
These calculated pleas
Have been retired
In only five years
In 2025
The George Floyd Warranty
Has expired
And all of those dedicated
Companies
Are silent

So what’s it mean to you

- gB