Oh, Kwanza

Back when the Bantu and Arabs had a linguistic marriage
and had a baby named Swahili
When I learned about the First Fruits and Ngozu Saba
The names were pretty familiar

We say that we were kings and queens

But somebody has to be the subject,
Somebody has the be ruled
Starved and whipped

And left behind in the hood

while we pursue being boughie living next to Chad and Karen

Somebody had to drag the blocks that built Giza and Timbuktu

Go and ask the bones...

That tell the story of Yoruba and Ashanti

Tribes we’ve reclaimed out of new Black Pride
With convenient amnesia – blotting out their Uncle Tom history:

Of selling their own kind 

To pale invaders and flesh traders

Mandinka and Masai were
Weighed down with manacles that severed our connection to Motherland

So Nat Turner died a death we never fully mourned
Or even known by the people he wanted to save

We blink more now 

Than we did back then
At black bodies swinging from trees
‘cuz back then these strung up bodies looked exactly like our newly adopted God hanging from the cross

So we quickly thought our lot in life

Was to also end up hanging in sacrifice...

In the new millennium,
We reject the whips and plantations and cotton gins
But we still hold on to chicken feet and beaks and cracklins

We finally got our holiday to celebrate a King's life
Never mind his plagiarism or the STD he brought to his wife

So now it makes sense that someone would make up a story that I have a dream speech was paid for by a rapist named Cosby

And Malcolm was also right – 

He saw the hypocrisy of his leader Elijah having babies with his teenaged secretaries

He saw hoe hating led to handshakes with neo-Nazis

And he knew he would fulfill the prophecy that Biggie said:

That The one really ever remembers you

Until somebody blows off your head

But the only thing that remains is Knowledge and God

Long after …
We blow the dust off of Public Enemy tapes

And faded Africa medallions nestled in the closet with our Kente cloth scarves

That we only take down at Kwanza

Weigght, Somebody please tell me: Just what the hell is Kwanza?
That Champion Apparel rebrand of a Black Holiday...?
Christmas in Black Face...?
Where we celebrate the corn that Actually came from Mexico
But Both the face ofJesus'  and his birthday are made up
And the real Saint Nick looked more like Firstly

Than that fat white dude at the mall
So I guess it must be okay to make up our own celebration
Like Rachel Dolezal makes up her melanation

And it must be okay that the father of Kwanzaa's tortured 2 sistas
Because "American criminal" is  sim[ply a redundant term of of 2 synonyms
But every year after The seven principles like umoja, and imani
I think of an 8th word You never ever hear about: uwaji-bikaji

Bettter known as accountability

Long after our history gets lost
And compacted into the shortest month of the year

Long after our memory of Tupac finally accepts
That that nigga is truly dead
Murdered by our unreasonable expectations
So, Brenda:
Remember to keep your head up
And we'll forget why we  STILL call you "bitch"
Long after we finally see Willie Lynch’s letter
For the insult to our intelligence that it really is:

Long after...
We  will still pour out libations to those who came before us
And when we do -

We should include the names Deborah Jones and Gail Davis
Who were whipped, water tortured and burned by soldering irons
By the founder of our holiday

As we light the candles of kinara
We should remember that the power structure of our nation Is not something worthy to imitate

And it'll be okay to hold Karenga accountable
We can root for everyone Black and sit him at the little kids table
In a seat next to Clarence, Kanye, Candace, , Stephen A, and Flava Flav

So run, Little brother and/sister listener
Run over to your kwanza tree
Pull out from under it that R Kelly CD
And your Zulu Nation sweatshirt
Dip it into gasoline
And Set it all on fire

And dance and sing and riot your way to  the freedom...

that will only be  born when contradiction dies
The death of fake pride
Etched in full in pages like Roots with its self-admitted lies

The only thing that remains is Knowledge and God

Go ask Mansa Musa…Mali king and the richest man in history

only like two things behind in his city oof Timbuktu

A mosque…
And a school…

The only thing left is knowledge and God

And the only thing greater than yourself -
Is the Truth
And we have run so far from it-
only to travelin a big ass circle, so that
Truth is now the only place we have left to run to

7/16

12/17/20

First, I Ask Permission... (for Nikki Giovanni)

Dear Nikki

The Devil is really mad at me

She wants me to be sullen and silent
But I have a CTE brain injury
That has given me drapetomania

I have the same brain damage that plagued my hero Harriet
A pathological audacity to think I am free

An accident, like the discovery of lasik

That has given me the clarity of spectrums 
Not too many people normally see

So I will stand up even if it means I might be taken down

When they ask me why I'm bound in shackles

I will ask them, why are you still free?

Because I cannot stand to be liberated if you cannot just be

I will not go quietly – into that good night or bad day

I will fling my poems at shuttered windows

That will shatter and let air in so we can all breathe

With your permission, Ms Giovanni

I am going to sharpen this piece of metal

And wrap the dull end with a piece of torn bed sheet

Like inmates do in every prison

And I am going to stab my nigger in the neck

And let the blood spurt

And run all over my hands so that
The copper-red slickness

Makes my hands slippery enough to slide off these shackles...

I finally got my diploma, Professor

From that HBCU called Hard Knock University

So I am more than qualified and motivated to run the revolution

Because we most certainly are due a new exodus

That will leave these neo plantations

Barren and silent

Leaving  DAs and COs scratching their heads

Wondering why their slave auction blocks are so empty

And their plea bargains unsigned un-ratified

You made it okay, Professor

To say things twice

To acknowledge the power of rap and H Brown

You made it okay the question Bible-thumpers believing in dragons

But not believing that we belong in their neighborhoods
or that we could even read good

I assure you Professor

That Aquarius is not dead

And that Atlantis has always been in Nigeria

So says the oracle of the Ife head

You taught me that the only way to cure

A narcissist is to spit squarely into their face

So I've been chewing on brutal honesty

Turning my saliva into cobra venom

That I dip the end of pens in

That I shoot like arrows thru a compound bow called spoken word micophones

No, I will not police my tone

I'm going to let it riot and set fires and give it no curfew

I'ma be like Emmett Till's mama,

I will not hide my scars

I will not give love and acceptance

To fire hoses, dog bites, or dynamite

Nor be the forgiver of snitches

Or the ignorer of former counter intel pro informers
Fred Hampton will live forever in my finger of accusation

Dear Professor I've made it further
Than the myth of lowered expectations
I made it
Past the age of 21
And now when the police come
I don't feel like i have to run
I have always had a v.o.i.c.e.

I just had to steal it back from where they hid it
I got a felony and I still vote
I spit poems i myself wrote
in the margins of racist supreme court decisions
beside my prison record footnotes

I am the most dangerous and glorious thing on the planet
I read, write and own books
I speak, spell and sleep real well
I am the harbinger of the new day

I am the panther and the mongoose

Who will bite the heads off of every snake on Medusa’s head

Leaving a trail of locks telling dreadful tales of sorrow and split ends
But I won't take it - or her - back

But i know
As scarred as I am, I can still love
There are still tears to be wiped and
Lips to be kissed 
There are still Hands to hold
Histories to be rewritten
Lies to be untold

So Dearest Professor Giovanni:

I have heard your call and eaten in the circle

That sits attentively at your feet

You asked me if I could kill a nigger -

That one that lives in the mirror,

And learn to finally be a man

So, I stand before you with my own blood 
On my now free hands

More than ready to be the happy mortar

That bricks have been dying to meet...

But before I began to build

First I ask your permission:

Dearest, Professor: May I be allowed to speak?