And a Little Child Shall Lead Them

These are true accounts of real-life injustices and the names have not been changed to protect the guilty.

And a Little Child Shall Lead Them
by Michael R. Burch

1.
"Where's my daughter?"

"Get on your knees, get on your knees!"

"It's okay, Mommy, I'm right here with you."

2.
where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails
when thunder howls
when hailstones scream
when winter scowls
when nights compound dark frosts with snow ...
where does the butterfly go?

Four-year-old Dae'Anna Reynolds, nicknamed Dae Dae, loves fireworks; we can see her holding a "Family Pack" on the Fourth of July; the accompanying Facebook blurb burbles, "Anything to see her happy." But perhaps Dae Dae won’t appreciate fireworks nearly as much in the future, or "Independence" Day either.

Diamond Lavish Reynolds, Dae Dae’s mother, will remain "preternaturally calm" during the coming encounter with the cops, or at least until the very end.

Philando Divall Castile, cafeteria manager at a Montessori magnet school, was "famous for trading fist bumps with the kids and slipping them extra Graham crackers." Never convicted of a serious crime, he was done in by a broken tail light. Or was it his “wide-set nose” that made him look like a robbery suspect? Or was it racism, or perhaps just blind—and blinding—fear?

Lavish, Dae Dae and Castile went from picnicking in the park early on the evening of the Fourth, in an "all-American idyll" celebrating freedom, to the opposite extreme: being denied the simple freedom to live and pursue happiness. Over a broken tail light and/or a suspiciously broad nose.

Castile can be seen sitting on a park bench. Dae Dae and a friend are "running happily across the grass." Lavish, wearing an American flag top, exclaims, "Happy Fourth, everybody! Put the guns down, let these babies enjoy these fireworks!" Odd to have to put guns down to celebrate a holiday. Only in America, land of the free and the home of the brave?

3.
where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill,
beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill?
when the only relief’s a banked fire’s glow
where does the butterfly go?

... Now the cop’s gun is drawn in earnest, four shots ring out, Castile slumps over in his seat, a "gaping bullet hole in his arm," the vivid red blood seeping "across the chest of his white T-shirt." The cop continues to point his pistol into the car. His voice is "panicky."

"Fuck!"

The same curse a Baton Rouge police officer screamed after shooting another black man in a similar incident.

"He was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him!"

"Ma'am just keep your hands where they are!"

"I will sir, no worries."

"Fuck!"

"I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand open."

"You told him to get out his ID, sir, and his driver's license."

Little Dae Dae, sitting in the back seat, watches it all unfold. So praiseworthy when confronting the unthinkable, she seeks to console her mother, her voice "tender and reassuring" in marked contrast to the cop’s screams.

"It's okay, Mommy, I'm right here with you."

4.
and where shall the spirit flee
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is lost without a trace?
oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go?

"Oh my God, please don't tell me he's dead! Please don't tell me my boyfriend went like that!"

"Keep your hands where they are, please!"

Suddenly so polite, perhaps sensing some sort of mistake?

"Yes, I will, sir. I'll keep my hands where they are."

"It's okay, Mommy, I'm right here with you."

5.
I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

More cops appear on the scene.

"Get the female passenger out!"

"Ma'am exit the car right now, with your hands up. Exit now."

"Keep 'em up, keep 'em up! Face away from me and walk backward! Keep walking!"

"Where's my daughter? You got my daughter?"

"Get on your knees! Get on your knees!"

"It's okay, Mommy, I'm right here with you."

6.
Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
and finality has swept into a corner where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.

"Ma'am, you're just being detained for now, until we get this straightened out, OK!"

By now the cops realize the severity of the situation and Castile's injuries, which will result in his death within twenty minutes of the shooting.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

"Please don't tell me my boyfriend's gone! He don't deserve this! Please, he's a good man. He works for St. Paul Public Schools. He doesn't have a record of anything. He's never been in jail, anything. He's not a gang member, anything."

Lavish begins praying aloud: "Allow him to be still here with us, with me … Please Lord, wrap your arms around him … Please make sure that he's OK, he's breathing … Just spare him, please. You know we are innocent people, Lord … We are innocent. My four-year-old can tell you about it."

Lavish asks one of the cops if she can retrieve her phone.

"It's right there, on the floor."

"Fuck! It has to be processed."

The cop speaks to Dae Dae, who has started heading back to the car.

"Can you just stand right there, sweetie?"

"No, I want to get my mommy's purse."

"I'll take care of that for you, OK? Can you just stand right there for me?"

The cops continue to treat Lavish as a suspect. She later said that the cops "treated me like a criminal ... like it was my fault."

"Can you just search her?"

Mother addresses daughter tenderly: "Come here, Dae Dae."

"Mommy…"

"Don't be scared."

Lavish informs Facebook Live: "My daughter just witnessed this."

She tips the phone's camera to the side window of the squad car: "That's the police officer over there that did it. I can't really do shit because they got me handcuffed."

"It's OK, mommy."

"I can't believe they just did this!"

Lavish cries out, sounding "trapped, grief-torn." Dae Dae speaks again, "mighty with love," a child whose "quiet magnificence" commands us to also rise to the occasion.

"It's okay, I'm right here with you."

7.
And a little child shall lead them.

Amen

NOTE: The quoted parts of this poem were taken from a blow-by-blow account of the incident, "The Bravest Little Girl in the World," written by Michael Daly and published by The Daily Beast.

Chariots Afire
by Michael R. Burch

“He was too gentle for this earth.” — Elizabeth Harris Burch, my lovely, caring, compassionate wife, who asked me to write this poem

Elijah Jovan McCain was a young, slight black man who weighed just 140 pounds and had never been arrested or charged with any crime. Friends and family described him as a “spiritual seeker, pacifist, oddball, vegetarian, athlete, and peacemaker who was exceedingly gentle.”

There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world —
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.

Elijah had taught himself to play violin and guitar. During lunch breaks from his job as a massage therapist, Elijah took his instruments to animal shelters and played for the abandoned animals, believing his music helped put them at ease. Friends said Elijah’s gentleness with animals extended to his fellow human beings. One of his clients recalled Elijah as “the sweetest, purest person I have ever met. He was definitely a light in a whole lot of darkness.”

We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe’s.
Yours was an antique grace —Thrace’s or Mesopotamia’s.

On August 24, 2019, in the Denver suburb of Aurora, a 911 caller reported that someone who turned out to be Elijah was wearing a ski mask, flailing his arms, and looked “sketchy.” (Elijah was dressed warmly and wearing a ski mask because he had a blood circulation disorder that caused him to chill easily. His family believes the “arm flailing” was dancing and the transcript below confirms that Elijah was listening to music as he walked home.) After being accosted by three police officers, Elijah was pinned down, placed in a choke hold, and given an overdose of 500 mg of the sedative ketamine. He then went into cardiac arrest and died six days later. All three officers said their body cameras were knocked off during the incident.

where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails
when thunder howls
when hailstones scream
when winter scowls
when nights compound dark frosts with snow ...
where does the butterfly go?

Jurors would later convict one officer of third-degree assault and criminally negligent homicide, while acquitting two other officers of all charges. Two paramedics who administered the overdose were found guilty of negligent homicide.

where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill,
beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill?
when the only relief’s a banked fire’s glow
where does the butterfly go?

and where shall the spirit flee
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is lost without a trace?
oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go?

THE TRANSCRIPT

Officer: Do me a favor. Stop right there. Hey, stop right there. Stop. Stop.

Elijah: I have a right (crosstalk).

Officer: Stop. Stop. I have a right to stop you, because you’re being suspicious.

Elijah: Well, okay.

Officer: Turn around. Turn around.

Elijah: I see your (inaudible).

Officer: Turn around. Stop. Stop tensing up, dude.

Elijah: Let go of me.

Officer: Stop tensing up, bro. Stop tensing up.

Elijah: Let go of me.

Officer: Stop tensing up.

Elijah: Let me go.

Officer: Stop tensing up.

Elijah: No, let go of me.

Elijah: No. I am an introvert!

Officer: Stop tensing up.

Elijah: Please respect the boundaries that I am speaking.

Officer: Stop tensing up.

Elijah: Stop. Stop!

Officer: Relax.

Elijah: I’m going home!

Officer: Relax, or I’m going to have to change this situation.

Elijah: Leave me alone!

Officer: Stop.

THE OFFICERS TAKE ELIJAH TO THE GROUND

Elijah: You guys started to arrest me and I was stopping my music to listen. Now let go of me.

Officer: (inaudible) Let’s get over to grass there. Lay you down (inaudible).

Elijah: I intend to take my power back because I intend to be (inaudible). I get to be (inaudible).

Officer: (crosstalk) He just grabbed your gun, dude.

Officer: (crosstalk) Stop, dude! (inaudible). Get us some more units. We’re fighting him.

ELIJAH IS PINNED DOWN

Elijah: I can’t breathe!

Officer 1: Get him on back, he’s getting cuffs.

Officer 2: (Inaudible) In a bar-hammer.

Officer 1: Stop!

Officer 2: Stop!

Elijah: I can’t breathe, please stop!

Elijah: My name is Elijah McClain!

Officer: We had to use carotid.

Elijah: That’s all I was doing, I was just going home! (inaudible). I’m an introvert, and I’m different!

Officer: I heard some snoring.

Elijah: (Inaudible) I’m just different! I’m just different. That’s all! That’s all I was doing!

Officer: It was actually Rosenblatt’s. He reached for your gun, dude.

Officer: When we showed him up. When we showed up, he was wearing a ski mask.

Elijah: (crosstalk) Forgive me! All I was trying to do was become better.

Officer: We started it because he reached for Rosie’s gun.

These were Elijah’s last words:

I can't breathe. I have my ID right here. My name is Elijah McClain. That's my house. I was just going home. I'm an introvert. I'm just different. That's all. I'm so sorry. I have no gun. I don't do that stuff. I don't do any fighting. Why are you attacking me? I don't even kill flies! I don't eat meat! But I don't judge people, I don't judge people who do eat meat. Forgive me. All I was trying to do was become better. I will do it. I will do anything. Sacrifice my identity, I'll do it. You all are phenomenal. You are beautiful and I love you. Try to forgive me. I'm a mood Gemini. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Ow, that really hurt! You are all very strong. Teamwork makes the dream work. [after vomiting] Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to do that. I just can't breathe correctly.

THE END

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

Elijah would cling to life for six days before his soul left his body forever...

Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
and finality has swept into a corner where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.

---

Child of 9-11
by Michael R. Burch

a poem for Christina-Taylor Green, who was born
on September 11, 2001 and died at the age of nine,
shot to death ...

Child of 9-11, beloved,
I bring this lily, lay it down
here at your feet, and eiderdown,
and all soft things, for your gentle spirit.
I bring this psalm — I hope you hear it.

Much love I bring — I lay it down
here by your form, which is not you,
but what you left this shell-shocked world
to help us learn what we must do
to save another child like you.

Child of 9-11, I know
you are not here, but watch, afar
from distant stars, where angels rue
the vicious things some mortals do.
I also watch; I also rue.

And so I make this pledge and vow:
though I may weep, I will not rest
nor will my pen fail heaven's test
till guns and wars and hate are banned
from every shore, from every land.

Child of 9-11, I grieve
your tender life, cut short ... bereaved,
what can I do, but pledge my life
to saving lives like yours? Belief
in your sweet worth has led me here ...

I give my all: my pen, this tear,
this lily and this eiderdown,
and all soft things my heart can bear;
I bear them to your final bier,
and leave them with my promise, here.

---

Translations of Holocaust poems by Primo Levi

Shema
by Primo Levi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You who live secure
in your comfortable houses,
who return each evening to find
warm food,
welcoming faces ...

consider whether this is a man:
who toils in the mud,
who knows no peace,
who fights for crusts of bread,
who dies at another man's whim,
at his "yes" or his "no."

Consider whether this is a woman:
bereft of hair,
of a recognizable name
because she lacks the strength to remember,
her eyes as void
and her womb as frigid
as a frog's in winter.

Consider that such horrors have been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them in your hearts
when you lounge in your house,
when you walk outside,
when you go to bed,
when you rise.
Repeat them to your children,
or may your house crumble
and disease render you helpless
so that even your offspring avert their faces from you.

Buna
by Primo Levi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mangled feet, cursed earth,
the long interminable line in the gray morning
as Buna smokes corpses through industrious chimneys ...

Another gray day like every other day awaits us.

The terrible whistle shrilly announces dawn:
"Rise, wretched multitudes, with your lifeless faces,
welcome the monotonous hell of the mud ...
another day’s suffering has begun!"

Weary companion, I know you well.

I see your dead eyes, my disconsolate friend.
In your breast you bear the burden of cold, deprivation, emptiness.
Life long ago broke what remained of the courage within you.

Colorless one, you once were a real man;
a considerable woman once accompanied you.

But now, my invisible companion, you lack even a name.
So forsaken, you are unable to weep.
So poor in spirit, you can no longer grieve.
So tired, your flesh can no longer shiver with fear ...

My once-strong man, now spent,
were we to meet again
in some other world, beneath some sunnier sun,
with what unfamiliar faces would we recognize each other?

Note: Buna was the largest Auschwitz sub-camp, with around 40,000 foreign “workers” who had been enslaved by the Nazis. Primo Levi called the Jews of Buna the “slaves of slaves” because the other slaves outranked them.

Primo Michele Levi (1919-1987) was an Italian Jewish chemist, writer and Holocaust survivor. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. It has been described as one of the best books by one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His unique work The Periodic Table was shortlisted as one of the greatest scientific books ever written, by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Levi's autobiographical book about his liberation from Auschwitz, The Truce, became a movie with the same name in 1997.

---

Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch
by Michael R. Burch

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all tied up
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.

Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)

Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.

---

First they came for the Muslims
by Michael R. Burch

(after Martin Niemoller)

First they came for the Muslims
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for the homosexuals
and I did not speak out
because I was not a homosexual.

Then they came for the feminists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a feminist.

Now when will they come for me
because I was too busy and too apathetic
to defend my sisters and brothers?

Published in Amnesty International’s Words That Burn anthology.

My poem is a sequel to Martin Niemoller’s famous poem that begins “First they came for the Jews …” and I am in agreement with him. At different times in history different groups have been the targets. In Roman times, Christians were the targets. After Christians came to power, people of other religions became the targets. In Niemoller’s Germany, Jews became the targets and the Holocaust was the ghastly result.

Niemoller was a German pastor who supported Hitler in the early going. But Niemoller ended up in a concentration camp and nearly lost his life. So he was writing from bitter experience. The way to prevent such things from happening, I believe, is to make sure that everyone is afforded real equality and justice. For me, that means Jews, Muslims, Christians, homosexuals, feminists — everyone without exception.

---

Epitaph for a Palestinian Child

―for the children of Gaza and the Nakba
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

---

I, too, have a dream ...
that one day Jews and Christians
will see me as I am:
a small child, lonely and afraid,
staring down the barrels of their big bazookas,
knowing I did nothing
to deserve such scorn.
―The Child Poets of Gaza, a pseudonym of Michael R. Burch

---

My nightmare ...

I had a dream of Jesus!
Mama, his eyes were so kind!
But behind him I saw a billion Christians
hissing "You're nothing!," so blind.
―The Child Poets of Gaza, a pseudonym of Michael R. Burch

---

who, US?
by Michael R. Burch

jesus was born
a palestinian child
where there’s no Room
for the meek and the mild

... and in bethlehem still
to this day, lambs are born
to cries of “no Room!”
and Puritanical scorn ...

under Herod, Trump, Bibi
their fates are the same —
the slouching Beast mauls them
and WE have no shame:

“who’s to blame?”

---

Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable ...

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this—
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss ...

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears ...

---

For a Child of Gaza, with Butterflies
by Michael R. Burch

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails
when thunder howls
when hailstones scream
while winter scowls
and nights compound dark frosts with snow?
Where does the butterfly go?

Where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill
beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill?
When the only relief's a banked fire's glow,
where does the butterfly go?

And where shall the spirit flee
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is lost without a trace?
Oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go?