Well, this past Tuesday around four in the morning I watched this video on youtube:
The song is called Detroit '67 by Sam Roberts. I love the song and the video. And more often then not it gets my creative mind-a-going. This time in particular after watching it, I felt like I just had to a poem or something on the riots. It needed to be done. This poem came to me in one fell swoop, word for word, while I was in my World Literature class. We were taking notes on Kafka, and well he gave us these slide-show handouts and well I used it for this:
So hear it is my first haphazard attempt to write a poem on the riots of Detroit.
And Then It Ended
The American Dream was in flames
As Detroit was in chaos
Blacks and Whites now working together
As wrecking balls
Releasing all the angst and hate
That had gotten to this point
That one week in '67
The immoveable object of Detroit
Met the unstoppable force
Of its people
And the unstoppable force won
The townspeople ripped the city
From its roots
Like a tooth from its gums
Painful to see
But even more painful to experience
The blood of Detroit spewed out
In flames
Engulfing the memories
Burying all optimism
And burning the past
Only allowing it to be represented
In the flickering embers that floated
And littered the sky
Much like the rioters were littering the future
Of this city
But the fact remained
This was still their city
That they made with their own hands
And now those hands were tearing it down
Piece by piece
They were destroying the dream
And they manifested it as a nightmare
That Motown would never wake up from
And then it ended
After a week
The city was bled out
As were the flames
The heart of Detroit
Seized to beat
Suffocated by its people
Left only to be a poor
Charred relic
And then ended
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