Suburban blues kidnapped people to Detroit
where what they didn't know makes them leave.

Make no apologies while they listen, listen to me--
the righteous one.

Until it happens to them, people will never understand
our city and the plights that forever haunt me.

Other women clutch their sadness; their babies
are dying in coffins; the guns of someone's else misery
are etched in their misery.

Uneasiness sings to me. . .

I've cried and walked through cemeteries,
familiar faces I can no longer hold onto.

Sometimes I wonder what has everyone running in a frenzy,
trying not to go to fall
to
pieces.

Someone calls me a black-and-white coward;
I'm a leopard and I won't change my stripes.

Even the soil of our city is ruined by fire
and nightmares that hang over like a dark cloud
and the black mayor who refuses to be nobody's
fool but his own.

There are no smiles and lollipops and ice cream
trucks and the children grow up c r a c k e d to pieces.

Helpless we are, hopeless we'll stay, help us they
said. Witnesses canvas neighborhoods looking for
saints and converts. One of them asks me, Whose favorite
person are you? I say, none, not in this city, behind
the doors. They say they care and they will be back
and I wait and wait and wait until I'm all alone again.

--Piper Davenport