Stanzas for Buffalo: A Jazz/Blues Poem

Are we soulful enough
to sit together and scribe
stanzas that find hope
and answers for the
people in Buffalo?

If you own a saxophone,
can you blow for the Black
people who lost their lives
to racial terrorism, can you
play the Blues for all the
victims;

the citizens who will need
healing?

Just maybe, my pen
will perform a salute
to the fallen Black
security guard whose
family will be scarred

for the rest of their lives.

I’m pleading for poets
All across the land to
lend Buffalo your attention,

to write them something
soothing, moving. May
whatever you choose to
write help ease them,

guide them, bring them
victories with spiritual
vernacular.

We need soul songs
for Buffalo. Poems minus
ego, but carries the right
sounds, ‘specially after
the deceased are buried
in the ground

and the cameras and the
reporters are gone.

The Blues travels through
Black communities when
we’re all asking politicians
for protections, and the
nation for unity.

I need harmonica players
and griots to collaborate,
imagining a better future
for Black Buffalo in the thick
of thoughts, sadness,
turmoil, travesty.

Let’s make the words
and the music count,

and spread love and peace
constantly and consistently!

by Christopher D. Sims
May 15, 2022