Of Good and Evil

for R, G, P

They call Good evil—

and evil, divine.

Sunday knees descend on

Pews like throats—

swallowing sanctified breath

beneath a crucifix

with closed eyes wide open—

While we struggle

to justly breathe.

In this winterized America 

Thieves in the temples 

stealing all that is sacred

Vilified our names

Things our mothers gave us

To hide their shame.

Truth is—

there’s no redemption

when your evil ends the Good.

The dove cries—

and the purple sky splits where

Even silence has a cacophony

And heaven re-members our names—

as Good.

—Tshombe Sekou

©2026 All rights reserved.

I wrote this poem as a witness, one pair of eyes among many, watching Minnesota tremble beneath the weight of an old injustice. Today it burns at the center of a storm that has long moved in the shadows, swallowing the breath of generations who learned to live without a voice.

And though today the face of suffering is white, I name it only to remind us that sorrow has never chosen a single color. The forgotten have always been many, painted in every shade of America’s long night.

We say all lives matter because justice should know no boundary, no border of skin or state. But when we cried that Black lives mattered, it was to speak a truth this nation refused to hear—that Black and brown lives had been the quiet casualties, the ones buried beneath the noise.

And what rises in Minnesota is not confined to its streets; it is an echo traveling the country, calling each of us to remember what we have tried too long to forget.

For Renee, George, and Prince.