“Why I March for Anthony Boyd” : Liturgical Free Verse

I march for Anthony Boyd
because death has become ordinary
in this country
because the state whispers it to us like a lullaby
because justice now wears a mask of vengeance
because our silence has become consent

I march because somewhere
we began to confuse punishment with virtue
we began to believe that killing
could cleanse the world
that a mask could baptize our sins away
that a ritual of death could sanctify our fear

I march because I know better

The execution of Anthony Boyd
is not law…it is ritual
an altar of cruelty
a liturgy of a religion
that calls itself justice
but worships only the blood it pours
Alabama may control the gas
but the poison flows through all of us
each killing cuts a piece
from the collective body
from the heart of God
and leaves us hollowed,
blind,
a people who have forgotten mercy

I march because I refuse to look away

Anthony Boyd has lived thirty years
in the harsh shadows of a sentence
that should shame us all
thirty years of waiting
of counting days
of wondering if the next knock
will be the last
thirty years of slow dying
of learning to breathe under the weight of fear
of imagining each night that death waits
like a patient visitor
ready to claim him

That is not justice
that is cruelty with a calendar

I march because I have seen him
because I can testify
to his flesh, his breath, his laughter
because the God I know
does not stop at the prison gate

The state tells us executions bring closure
but closure is a myth
a polished lie
that hides the hunger beneath
Every execution feeds the hunger
and it always returns
There is no peace in killing
only the illusion of control
and the forgetting of mercy

I march because mercy
is the last truth left
it says what the state cannot
that every person
is more than their worst moment
that the image of God
cannot be erased
by violence…ours or theirs

The commandment is unedited
unyielding
Thou shalt not kill

We can legalize it, pray over it, dress it in white gloves
but we cannot make it holy

I march because the cross
has already spoken
the Romans killed Jesus in law’s name
they called it order, stability, peace
but God called it murder

The divine response
was not vengeance
but resurrection
God keeps raising
those we try to bury

Every time we kill
we crucify again
Every time we show mercy
we roll the stone away

Justice has become a sport
and the crowd roars
“Justice served”
but I call it a carnival of dehumanization
the bloodlust of spectators unchanged
since Golgotha

I march because I believe
we are better than our horrors

I march because I cannot live life
and stay silent
while the machinery of death
turns in the heart of the nation

I march because I have seen what killing does
to watchers, executioners, the nation
It corrodes the soul
teaches that compassion is optional
blinds us to God in the condemned
It teaches obedience to cruelty
as if cruelty were holy

I march because I believe
in the resurrection of the human heart
I have seen the condemned pray for their executioners
I have seen remorse bloom
in places the world forgot
I have seen hope
where we were told hope was dead

The execution chamber is not the end
it is the place where redemptive violence
reveals itself as a lie

I march for possibility
the possibility that we will learn
what the cross has been teaching
for two thousand years
you cannot kill your way to redemption

The blood we spill in the name of justice
does not cleanse
it multiplies

I march for Anthony Boyd
because his death will not make us safer
or purer, or whole
It will remind us
how deeply we have forgotten ourselves

Every act of state killing
reaffirms the heresy
that some lives are expendable

I march because no one is beyond grace
because the gospel I know is not neutral
it kneels beside the condemned
whispers into the dark
“You are not alone”

I march because to do nothing
is to bless the killing
I march to be counted
among those who refused to sit still
I march because love is stronger than death

I march for Anthony Boyd
because the breath in his lungs is sacred
and so is mine
and yours
To march for him
is to march for the world
to remember
the meaning of mercy
to remind a nation
that the work of justice
is never complete
until the condemned
are lifted from the shadow of death

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*If you would like to support the Execution Intervention Project (the organization that financially supports Dr. Hood’s work), click here.