Three streams converge in my veins,
makin
my soul river deep,
like Langston used to say.
Mississippi, Potomac, Volta and the Nile….
I am a nomad, an African nomad.
My ancestors traveled
for miles
and miles and miles and miles…
Displaced, raped,
they bleached my blood
to make me pure, they said.
But I am forever African.
By spirit, upbringin, feelin
rhythm, history, blood…
Blood so strong it flows to the same beat
in every corner of the world,
on the stoop of every brownstone
in Harlem,
every street.
It’s that one drop rule,
we were three fifths human
got forty acres and a mule,
in the country that was built
on those cotton fields
with no shame, no guilt
the machine still kills
today.
French, Nigerian, Dominican, American…
It don’t matter,
You black.
They’ll replace those 40 acres
with 41 shots in the back
like they did Diallo.
But we as a people
will not follow.
We got too much history to go down
like that.
Its time to wake up
get up, stand up
and fight the powers that be
like Public Enemy
at the birth of hip hop.
We need to take it back y’all
to the root, to the top
and reprioritize
our goals,
our lives
to educate the people
expose the lies
he corruptors
corrupting the corrupt
in those Bretton Woods
where souls are sold for credit on loans
that are paid with interest.
Forget fashion week and
Hov and Nas’s beef,
forget ‘change is gonna come’ and ‘Inshalla.’
Be the change you wish to see
in the world,
like Gandhi.
And do it right now.
Cause change ain’t gonna come
if you wait too long.
We need to be up in the oval office
and the pentagon,
to shut down the machine
run by old white men
that targets all of our African kin,
And Arabs and Asians and Latinos…
Exploiting the land
in order to “defend”
democracy and justice.
They even got the nerve to say
they trying to promote equality!
For who and when? Surely not today
for me, a black sister,
with three streams converging
in my blood; one you helped to create.
Well, I reject your
“Equality”
and your conditions and logic
Cause they weren’t made for me.
I, who have
three ghosts residing
in the closet of my soul:
one Native American, one European,
and one loud Black,
and bold.