They told him “put your hands up.”
He did and that day he died.
Innocence put to death.
His crime was he complied

The authorities are the ones who killed him.
He must have “fit the right description”
They called him a troublemaker.
Never mind it was a fiction

It wasn’t just the way he looked
It was also the way he saw
He loved outside the rules
To them it violated law

He was out with his friends
No one knows what he did wrong
But they came for him with their weapons
They already had them drawn

Though unarmed and non-threatening,
They started drawing near
To me it’s quite ironic
That they were filled with so much fear

What were they afraid of–
The stories they were told?
“You better watch out with a guy like him.”
“He’s been known to lose control.”

“Have you seen the crowd he hangs with?”
“Let’s look at all the facts.”
“A gang leader if there was ever one.”
“He should have never crossed the tracks.”

“He dines with people known as criminals.”
“He’s friends with women of the night.”
“Believe me he’s not innocent’.”
“Something is just not right.”

That’s the kind of messaging
That makes those like him such a threat
No one ever gets him
And we still haven’t seen him yet

That’s why still today we kill him
In the bodies we see as least
And yet many of us say we follow him
I thought he was called “The Prince of Peace”

He died so we could stop this
But still we choose to pay the price
Because whenever we kill the innocent
We are always killing Christ.

© Copyright 2016 Pedro S. Silva II

No matter what one thinks about Christ, we know what innocence is and what it isn’t in the depths of our being. When we deny that knowledge, we deny all that can be right in this world.