Culture

To You reading this, this was a musical performance poetry that I performed at Black History Month Symposium in Our Prison’s Harambee African Cultural Club, so hopefully the substance is soaked though the complete essence won’t be fully absorbed.

It was hyped with chants of “I got that energyyyyy” from me to the crowd to depict youthful hopeful and enduring resilience, choosing not to be victim but victor of circumstance, not being a theme of bad news and bad luck but of innovation and ingenuity thru it all by having a healthy view of self and culture without shame.

Culture is a celebration of people and their uniqueness of experience and tradition, it is an invitation, exclusively and inclusively! So I invite you to never feel left out or spoken against when I speak artfully of mine as a Black Human Being merely explaining my story from my point of view.

“Resilience Energy thru Plight”

there’s too many cold cases
we killing your own
because of self hatred
blood flowing into seams,
crevices,
and creeks-
creating a fatal oasis
history lost to blank pages
but this has been the story for ages
our culture is sacred
but we don’t take time to embrace it

to the world,
a black boy is a Man
and so are his charges
so trump up his charges
even before, Trump was in office
too many of us
was slumped inside coffins
made orphans and seen like the problem
police seeing robbers
just cuz we got hoodies
speaking more of what we were
than what we “could be”
my people keep struggling
cold getting heat from the oven
and sleeping wit oven mits…

accustomed to suffrage
assistance is cumbersome
living like savages, subjugates
HUD has us living in huts
so we hustling
misery loving company
seems like a coven that’s made by a covenant

that we call government
keeping us stumbling, funneling
bundles of guns and some drugs
that come in from others to smother our growth
while we tryna cater to stomachs that rumbling
ramen in tumblers
we ‘gotta ball’, we ain’t fumblers

position and dreams are a fable, we only speak of it
no wonder we wander and wonder
we never reap wonders
and never recovered
from slavery customs
our plight gets no coverage

institutional fundament
built up a system of classists-
the richest that prey on the hunger
no funds for the humblest
this where we come from, conditions its hard to come up from
live month to month just to hunt for a come up
by stunting the come up of
of our sisters and brothers huh?!

wit no hesitation, that’s facts!
feels like I was born wit a strap
life is a war when u black!
life is a war when u black!
war is the law, in a land that was built on our backs!
they warring on crime
warring on drugs
warring on rappers-

cuz they only niggaz
and thugs
and call all women bitches
they gangsters
they saggin
and never speak english
and only sell drugs
and kill they own just to be ‘factors’

yet fractions ain’t whole
tell’em ‘stay woke!’
statistics, when we a day old
say its ‘their’ fault, say ‘they’ ain’t owed
acres and mules-

but we settled for museums
and music
and muses
amusing,
our culture infused wit
some cubics
the blueprint
of new age solutions
yet ‘we’ stay in ruins

the cost is ‘us’ ruined
pursuing the jewelers
but not for no wisdom-we foolish
medulla polluted
now all of us shootaz!
you can’t fit in my shoes! no empathy!
life of a ruler!
clips like a movie
that shooting from uzi’s
when chasing that guda
on rims for influence
instead of in school or some movements-

we can’t see a human
if we never facing the truth,
and the music of what we keep doing..

but I got that energy
I face the truth and the music
lyrical entrepreneur
I found my grind from the sewer
I had to climb out manure
I turned the soup to dijour
I did this time to be sure
now I’ma speak out like a tour

cuz I got that energy!!
we I just need synergy
speak from the inner me

way before I was infringed with obscenities
lived for affinities
chasing amenities
never made sense to me
before my sentencing
since
my earliest memories-
misery
murder was kin to me
I hated colors, said I was black,
tho
I wouldn’t pretend to be
but
complexion offended me
cuz
the system befriended me
but
I ain’t need sinister sympathy
I was just livin thru repeated history
I felt defeated and misery
promise you I’m speaking literally
they was too scared of me physically
umm…

too dark to get empathy, sympathy
too dark to feel symmetry, chemistry
too bad to feel jimmeny cricket-
identity, finicky
talking bout pain-I’m the epitome
lived wit a pit in me
been thru the rough like a ligament
was hated but I loved too much like polygamous
they seen my pigment
put in predicaments
I paid my dividends
still never made a difference

they said I was menacing
I wasn’t victim
just plagued by my history
but I got that remedy
I’ve been resilient
I’m more than a villain-
cold blooded reptilian
no longer concealing
reflection appealing
my layers keep peeling
and only revealing
that I got that,
I got that
I got that energyyyy!