*In a June 2016 letter to the judge, Dan Turner, father of rapist, Brock Turner, wrote:
“His life will never be the one he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve…He’d never even expressed violence before the incident in question…That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action. Out of his 20+ years of life.”
Open letter on behalf of Brock Turner’s“20 minutes of action*,”
Now,
This may come to you as a shock Dan Turner
Given the level of competence you displayed in your quote
I imagine most things are…
But there is no 5-second rule,
Like when food grazes the ground
Rape still counts
No matter how many seconds it lasts
15 years and 4 days ago
The first tower was struck at 8:46am
The other only 17 minutes later
Both towers and families collapsed
In seconds
But we do not mourn the lives of the hijackers
We do not grant amnesty nor leniency
Simply because they pulled it off in under an hour!
Who comforts the grieving families
By adding,
Well
They’ve never killed in the past—
So it’s not really that bad
In 20 minutes,
12 people were gunned down at a Colorado
Midnight showing of the Dark Knight
With 13 minutes to spare
But somewhere the police are arriving on time
A soft baby is being cooed to sleep
By a mother with nursery rhymes for eyes
Three black men cloaked in night have made it home
Safely
Bellies swell with fufu, meat, and okra mixed with stew
A black girl exhales deeply
She has big chopped and feels weightless again
Feels suspended in the air
For Usain Bolt,
Even a morsel of a second
Made him the fastest human on Earth
In 20 minutes,
You could listen to 6
Back to back slam poems from survivors
About the shame and guilt they can only shed
For 3 minutes at a time on stage
Just enough
To make this poem relevant for
2 more women
When you say “20 minutes of action”
Do you think of doing a load of laundry
Or what will come out in the wash
Do you imagine sweeping your living room
Or picture what you’ve left to rot under your rug
Are you cleaning out your closet
Or burning the bones you’ve buried within it
Is it just half a Fela Kuti song?
An overture without the repeats to you?
Have you no regard
For how many crimes you can commit in 20 minutes?
Is your White Male American,
Blue-eyed Upper middle class,
Privileged blonde head
Too far up your own ass to see
How black
And unbothered you can be
In that span
How woman
How unconscious
How non-complying
It takes most people 60 minutes
To process ½ oz. of liquor
Do you know how many chances that left Brock
To make a good decision?
How dare you trivialize the wrath
A Turner has wreaked in 20 minutes time?
How a Nat Turner
Led a slave rebellion
So calculated
Educating black people became illegal
How an Ike Turner would lay hands,
Snort a line,
And write a song
In a fraction,
Hell,
Even Timmy Turner got 12 wishes
From his Fairly Oddparents
During opening credits
And you expect me to believe
A Turner can’t cause destruction
Can’t rewrite history
Can’t bring people together
Before tearing them apart
What you fail to resolve
Is that however spent,
Minutes are the very definition of lifetime.
And if I could only have one to spare on you,
You would never disrespect any of us again.
