By P.D. “Phoenix YZ” Battle

I heard Wayne Williams on the radio,
sounding more than early morning choked-up
‘bout
those kids and
his prison tenure destiny.
True listeners gauge between the frequencies,
“Atlanta Child Murders”
mental pictures detour commuting frenzies
tuning in to doubt,
almost twenty years of misinformed juries questioning,
What if,
he didn’t orchestrate the fate of those children?
And new age DNA samples
disprove earlier theories,
reform and take the shape of the
ghetto gossip hypotheses
I hadn’t heard since my younger years,
“The KKK killing those poor black kids”.
Born to be taken,
death snatched from life.
Young angels,
unfit for earthly beds
of dirty pillowcases
and dolls broken
necks in the south’s heart.
Playing a serial game
where nobody’s It.
Everyone is the Killer
turning their heads,
covering their faces,
as if the projects weren’t unsafe enough.
Stole our few good times
of neighborhood play dates,
hide and seek,
twisted into seek and lost
bodies found in dumpsters.
Momma said no one’s allowed outside ‘til
she gets home from work.
We walk from school in elbow locked packs
‘cause rumor has it
they got babies and bed sheets
at crime scenes.
Georgia clay muddy,
bloody,
spooky uniforms for the hate army.
Them dry souls,
with tearless salt feelings in the wounds
of children who rest in tombs
of red dirt.
The burnt capital,
is their cremated coffin.
The murders’ playground
is the hood,
the van,
their hearse,
their deaths
a call
to wake up the people.