Poetry for #Blacklivesmatter

Black Lives Matter | Kofi Mensah

ARTWORK | JOE POLLITT

BLACK LIVES MATTER

This Movement is extremely important. Not just about police brutality in America but black lives across the globe. Here is a poem Kofi wrote that takes on an African beat and plays with the syllables of Black (1) Lives (1) Matter (2) - the poem starts off with 4 syllables and then is reduced to 3 and ends up back with the initial 4 syllables. This is to show how talent, opportunities and lives are squeezed in the middle and then return to normal in the end. Every line is read as a single entity fragmented but also as a whole, as a story told so simply. Not wanting to sound like a singer, a front-man but more like a bass. Not wanting to create a complete band-sound or an orchestra, no, just a bass note of syllables on every line that make up the 4/3/4 style poem. Kofi's intention is to sound like a lost bow-less cello. Saying something as simply as possible, like a jab from a boxer rather than an uppercut or a killer blow.

Black Lives Matter
We cannot stop
Our lives matter
So-We can see
You cannot stop
You will all-ways

Hold us back
We can never
Rise too high
You will cut
Our bite down
Just to say

We made you great
Dreaming the dream
Sight for sore-eyes
That we exist
Going nowhere
So-say no more
#Blacklivesmatter.

Kofi Mensah | 26/09/2016