RP3: "How I Could Just Kill A Man"

The poem “They’re Always Telling Me I’m Too Angry” has been on my mind lately and when the song “How I could Just Kill a Man” came up, it definitely resonated with some lines of the poem. The line “I could easily kill several million random white folk just to feel a little balance on this poor earth” (Chrystos) stood out to me the first time I read the poem. I thought of it as too violent, too out there. As I read the rest of the poem and reread it several times, I didn’t have the same reaction to the line. I’m not necessarily agreeing with it, but I then had a better understanding of why that line is in the poem. I get why Chrystos said it, and it all has to do with the anger that the narrator has, but I thought it as, using the violence that the oppressors have used. Now that violence is not only from the oppressors to the oppressed, but even among the oppressed, “But I’ve known since I was little that no matter how many of us they kill it’s only ok for us to help them kill other brown folk or to cheat each other or hate each other.” The colonizers have taught us to turn on one another.

The song “How I Could Kill a Man” by the Hip Hop group Cypress Hill definitely made me think about it. I remember seeing the title of the song for the first time, and I didn’t even bother listening. This song came up again a few days ago and I automatically thought of Chrystos. The chorus for the song “ How I could Just Kill a Man” goes, “Here is something you can’t understand, How I could just kill a man.” For various reasons this violence is seen in various similar communities, which is violence within a community (or within people of color). The Chrystos poem has to do with the oppressed (predominately people of color) and it addresses that no one will ever know what another person experiences even if they try (and that goes for everyone), but it would be even more difficult to try to understand what an underrepresented person has gone through.

“How do you know where I'm at
when you haven't been where I've been, understand where I'm coming from.
While you're up on the hill in your big home
I'm out here risking my dome, just for a bucket or a faster ducket,
just to stay alive yo I got to say fuck it.
here is something you can't understand, how I could just kill a man.”
-“How I Could Just Kill A Man” by Cypress Hill