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?