This is Asafo Chuma Asafo reporting from Huntington State Prison in Pennsylvania.
I can’t breathe within the solitary confinement of this police state environment.
Eleven times ignored cries, until my freedom of speech went silent.
I can’t breathe, asphyxiated by mass incarceration,
Fixated on eradicating access to public education.
I can’t breathe beneath the weight of state-sanctioned hatred,
Unleashed, unabated onto a forsaken generation.
I can’t breathe, pepper sprayed and handcuffed,
Hands up in Ferguson, no weapons displayed, not enough.
Man down. A murdered son.
I can’t breathe, choking on the smoke and mirrors
Of corporate control tel-I-vision
Promoting hope and fairness at foisted grand jury decisions.
I can’t breathe, muzzled, incommunicado,
Wondering what Obama would say about prison hunger strikes
And struggles from Cali to ADX Colorado1 and Guantanamo Bay.
I can’t breathe, swallowed into the jaws of extrajudicial madness
And waterboard torches, shrouded under laws to suppress the much less fortunate.
I can’t breathe, entrapped within the narrow space of democracies,
Hypocrisies, and probable causes, liabilities;
Re-wrapped in the hollow embrace of plutocracies, fallacies and plausible deniability.
I can’t breathe smothered by lies, toy guns and lost lives.
Twelve years a child covered in guile, forked tongues and racial profiles.
I can’t breathe because my dark hue causes a re-public nuisance,
Arousing the ire of the ages of empire and their colorful stooges.
Publicly lynched till I expire by NYPD hands
Fashioned like nooses, for the high crimes of bartering black market Lucy’s2.
I can’t breathe in fascist, racist, capitalist America.
This is Asafo, Chuma Asafo reporting from Huntington.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
1ADX Florence Supermax prison
2 LSD
