Run

I saw a dead man tonight. I was walking out of the underground train station area where I meet up with my friend Bill every week to read poetry and chat. I rounded the corner near the stairs and there were a bunch of guys and a couple cops just standing around waiting for paramedics and just staring silently. He was just laying on his side, hood up so I couldn't see his face as I passed behind. But I could see the big pool of blood right in front of where his head was.

My feet passed, maybe 4 feet from where he was laying. No one asked me to stay away. No one urged me to move on. I just kept walking. Up the stairs, out into the cold and across the street to Love Park. And then I just started running. I was parked 6 or 7 blocks away, and I just ran the whole way there. I had to. Not because I was scared of something happening to me. But because something just clicked in me. And it made me want to scream so loud. And my insides were screaming. So instead I ran.

I have no idea what happened to that man, but I can guess. And what made me scream was not necessarily just this man, but the way that he all of a sudden brought to life all 67 homicides that happened in Camden this past year. I kind of got numb to them after hearing about it so much and seeing so many RIP sorts of facebook posts from old friends and students and neighbors that live there. And that's just Camden. This stuff happens all over the place. (Please please please don't read into this and start thinking that cities are filled with evil, violent people. They're not.)

But blood belongs to people. And seeing this man's blood just made him so starkly and vulnerably real. He was a person. With gifts and opinions and friends. He is someone's son. Maybe a brother or an uncle or a father.

And all of those 67 people, those 67 children... they each had a pool of blood that belonged to them, too. That made them real. All of those pools of blood became very real in my mind. Each one intimately represents two victims in my mind - the recipient and the doer of hurt: both victims of violence and hate.

68 pools of blood is enough to make anyone run.