Showing posts with label #blacklivesmatter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #blacklivesmatter. Show all posts

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Black Love on Fire

This is a love poem

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Bleed

Bleed 

We Bad
Ruffle feathers like bad weather
We young stormclouds
Dark on the horizon
Bad news
Niggas want to rumble real bad
Our blood be boiling
Be wanting to
Lock hands
Put it on somebody
We really want to fuck some stuff up
But what is that gon’ do?
How we gon’ handle this?
Blood gon’ be shed
Somebody going to jail
And Somebody else going to the hospital
Stab wounds, gunshots, take a long time to heal
But not as long as our spirits will take
Spirits will long remember
What these feet and fists feel like
Balled up made hard for contact against soft flesh
We will long remember what it feels like to have stomach folded over feet
Head buzzing
Blood in our mouths
Ears and face hot
So damn hot
Our spirits will not forget
This violence, this basic betrayal
Of what is best about us
Why we forgot how to come back from the place
Where our words don’t work
So we ride back to the words on one anothers’ pain
And so it goes:
“Bleed nigga bleed! Bleed nigga, nigga bleed! Nigga Bleed till you and I die. Nigga bleed till we die. Nigga bleed”
Nigga, I want you to bleed for me,
Your blood sacrifice is going to be my penance,
You on the cross me for me and everybody like me.
I need to forget so I am going to make you bleed
I am going to take it out on your flesh
Until I can’t shoot no more
Until I can’t beat you no more
Until you can’t breathe no more

Monday, May 18, 2015

Poem for young strugglers

A poem for young strugglers

This is not the first time we have thrown rocks and black bodies
At blood enemies
this is not the first time we have martyred our young
We have joined hands and hearts many times to fight this
We have marched
Bloody feet
Hands
Heads
From batons and bullets

In our young minds we forget
That we have done this before
Our old minds want to forget the pain of police batons
And dog bites
The sting of tear gas and the stench that never leaves your clothes
We want to forget the hate that burns us
The crosses burning on lawns
The men swinging from trees
Black bodies put on the line again and again
for what?
What are we fighting for?

Before we have burned
Bombed Black Wall Street
Bombed W. Philly
We have burned down Detroit
Watts
Long and hot summers

Why are they burning down their own neighborhoods?
Burn your cages, burn your cells, burn it all
But when you are finished burning
Be ready and willing, be able to build something new
that works

They/We are purging and burning the things you use to suck our blood
Burn the likker stores
The dollar stores
Check cashing
Smoke shops

Burn the mfs that put little girls on the ho stroll
And the ones that sell rocks to who ever has the money
Burn them too

Burn the shit that does not serve you
But be willing and ready to create something that does

Burn the whole thing

Be willing to sacrifice to get something better

We are.
We have

They say….pull yourself up by your bootstraps
But I have no boots
So I grab my ankles
And you fuck me
We made a mistake by not leaving this land to you
We keep saying we spilled blood here, we fought and died for this

But would the people we came from have done that?

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

doors. a poem for Baltimore and everywhere els

they say
we brought you here to work!

This place is not yours
all fancy free
busy shutting doors

so I knock and I wait
patiently and kindly while
you have your debate

“should we?”
some say
“nay”
say others

meanwhile, we are hungry
myself, my sisters and brothers

so I knock again
this time, a little more strength
the man answered the door
looking quite tense
“Um, please go stand over there and mind that fence”
“I guess you’ve been here for a while with me...how about twopence?”
I wait and I watch
but the door remains closed
Now the windows are shut.
I go back and I pound
The door opens a crack and out come the hounds

They tear at me
I run and then I attack

I’ve had enough of knocking politely on closed doors.
I’ve had enough of this wait to get what is mine.
I’m not tricked your sweet talks, the bribes, the lines.
I’ve put away distractions, the weed, the women, the sweet sweet wine.

Why do you treat me this way?
I know it’s because I am Black.