WAR PAINT

I’m tired of all the inconsequential bullshit.
I’m tired of all the peace talk from the pulpit.
I’m tired of all the kumbaya and cheek turning.
We’re trying harambee now, we seek learning.

Done with Sambo, Fetchit, Mantan, and Mammy too
Sick & tired of being sick & tired, peace to Fannie Lou
Tired of seeing cops standing over black corpses & carcasses
Do the right thing like Mookie, grab a can & take part in this
Don’t trash where we live, sling it at some Neiman-Marcuses

Done with the Uncle Toms & Stephens, y’all can get the hell out
If you ain’t down for the people, you’s a fuckin’ sellout
Eat shit and die, muthafucka. We don’t need you.
Maybe your spouse can join the movement & your seed too.
Calling us sellouts ’cause we’re down for the uplifting
While you slang poison to your own, junkies out drifting
You ain’t no better than the clan in them white sheets
Join their side, bitch, we’ll fight you too as the night creeps

Our use of the word nigger is an appalling fact
Our captors invented it, so why would I call you that?
You’re from the Dogon, Kushites, builders of pyramids
You can’t really think that it’s a term of endearment.

Respect to the First Nation people, a hail of cheers
Enduring lies and brutality on the Trail of Tears
From the Sioux to Seminole to the Delaware
Suffering together guarantees you won’t fail your peers

Likewise, we rise when we fall, become what we ain’t
Take our blood, sweat, & tears & wear it as war paint
Smear it on your cheeks, make the oppressors faint
Defile all their material gods, desecrate their patron saints

Switch up the slang, so they can’t break the code
Keep the culture fluid, can’t be stuck in the same mode
The vultures watch the lion, the boardrooms watch the streets
Trying to sync their metronomes to our African heartbeats

So it’s D-E-L, the Chiwetel of Cloverdale
12 years a slave to the rhythm, to hell with infidels
Edging for police oversight, it’s way too relaxed
Been followed, harassed, detained While Walking Black

And the first thing they do is turn a blind eye
Not even a second look, sit on the sidelines
Evil like the third antichrist, the Reich, the Sith
But when the truth comes forth, they plead the fifth

I scoped the game out from the mountain peak
Send smoke signals to spirits, knowledge I seek
Pray to the elders for guidance to light these paths
On how to deal with these uncivilized psychopaths

But see we know the deal, the score we know
Grandfather clauses, 13th Amendment, Cointelpro,
Tuskegee Experiment on residents, CIA pushing coke,
Katrina, lynchings, castrations, this ain’t a fuckin’ joke
Japanese internment camps, Chinese Exclusion Act,
Orange president wanna bring the “good old days” back,
Bloody Christmas, the Transatlantic Slave Trade,
Prison industrial complex, where new slaves are made,
Massacres at Wilmington, Thibodaux, and Rosewood
Tulsa, Wounded Knee, Tonkawa, and yo’ hood
King, X, Angela Davis, victims of FBI probes
Red and Lavender Scare, fuck all you xenophobes
Chinese Massacre of 1871 in downtown LA
Pigtail Ordinance against the Han building railways,
Red Summer 1919, assassinations, civil rights setbacks,
Eisenhower deports Mexicans in Operation Wetback,
Hate groups, Raping troops, bombing faces of brown and yellow,
Manifest Destiny evicting natives, a middle finger as a hello,
Harbingers of disease & wickedness with no panacea,
The Mayflower, Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria,
So much injustices, too many of them to even try to name
So many, I made some of them rhyme, now ain’t that a shame?

Atrocities with ferocity at inhumanly inhumane velocities
Then there’s curiosity and pomposity when we show animosity?

Fuck you! I’m through. Can’t fool me with Jedi mind tricks,
Subterfuges, ploys and plots, and dirty sidekicks.
Put on your war paint, my people, ahead victory lingers
Never let them turn the clock back, break their goddamn fingers
Their inferiority theory of us, in it we poke holes
I got Willie Lynch and Jim Crow in illegal police choke holds
You have permission to protect yourself, use your intuition,
Even if you obey the law, they’ll fill you with ammunition,
War was declared on you hundreds of years ago,
On your ancestor on the auction block near the pier row,
On your ancestor while they were marching and boycotting,
On your ancestor in the field, breaking their back picking cotton

Take their blood, sweat, and tears, and put in a bowl
Mix it up ’till it’s thick and dash it with some soul
Spread it under your eye, like eye black on a NOLA Saint
Never ever again, take what’s yours. Wear your war paint.

To my people of color looking for motivation,
To change the injustices in this damn nation,
Look for strength in one another and inside you,
Beautiful people, resist the next time they try to deny you
Fuck them all, and fuck you if you won’t ride too.

July 31, 2017 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment