© 28 August 2014, the Griot Poet
I don’t hear Jay-Z
Or his soon-to-be-ex-wife Queen Bey
I don’t hear Nicky Minaj
Nor do I hear anything sobering from “Weezy”
And Kanye – nothing more brilliant than “George Bush don’t like black people”
In the “shock and awe” of Hurricane Katrina
Rhythm and Poetry – RAP
Was supposed to be the “CNN of the streets”
Telling you like Marvin Gaye “what’s going on”
To a hip-hop beat
Until the suits
From Wall Street
Started putting percentages
On how many
Times you called yourselves
Or our queens
Outside of our majestic names for a plantation profit
Giving us bullshit
Step-in-fetch minstrel lyrics
Pimping our ears
With destructive metaphors
Programming us to think
We can’t be scientists, engineers or educators
Programming us to think
We can’t be anything more than
Thugs and twerking video vixens
The blood of recent ancestors calling to us from the ground:
Trayvon Martin…Jordon Davis…Renisha McBride…Eric Garner…Michael Brown…
Yet,
Our so-called, from-the-hood “real deal”
Lyricists haven’t put paper or pen on first date
To comment on these public, serial lynching’s
And, like the NRA (which stands for “not responsible anytime”)
Who should have something to say about the “jack-booted, government Barney Fife thugs”
In Ferguson
Who after a nine-year-old girl
Blew the brains out of
Her Uzi instructor in Arizona
Just like them
I hear the same “substantive” refrain from our so-called rap artists:
.
.
.
Crickets!
© 11 August 2014, the Griot Poet
Stage 1: may last for five to 10 minutes. Many may notice the feeling of falling during this stage of sleep, which may cause a sudden muscle contraction.
Stage 2: The heart rate slows and the body temperature decreases. At this point, the body prepares to enter deep sleep.
Stage 3 and 4: During the deep stages of NREM sleep, the body repairs and regenerates tissues, builds bone and muscle, and appear to strengthen the immune system.
Ref: http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/sleep-101
It's like killing the dream before first REM stage.
Taking a page from Eric Garner: “I can’t breathe…”
This one – Michael Brown, eighteen – in Missouri
Visiting his grandmother
Two days BEFORE he was to enter college…
“Pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps”
That’s what’s said,
You can’t pull when you’re shot dead before life’s journey begins…
It's like killing the dream before first REM stage.
He’ll be vilified in public:
Just like Renisha McBride (knocking on the wrong door after wrecking her car),
Just like Trayvon Martin (wearing a hoodie; carrying skittles),
Just like Jordon Davis (playing loud music),
Just like Amadou Diallo (raising his hands; one with a wallet),
Just like Sean Bell (coming from a bachelor party before his wedding day),
Just like Barack Hussein Obama (“President While Black”)
Just like my sons, me and every black person
Whose ancestors were stripped from their mother continent for a
Trip on the "Good Ship Jesus"
Laying in bile and filth
Surviving a mind-numbing conditioning
That buried our native tongues and customs
In distant memories
We can no longer access
Disrespected
From slavery to Jim Crow to passed-over applications to disrespect
On elevators, escalators and department stores
Our queens treated like two-bit whores
And our princes gunned down like dogs in the streets
Channels my inner Pablo Neruda, and I find myself "Explaining a Few Things”
For anyone who’ll listen, and trolls who won’t
It's like killing the dream before first REM stage.
Stage 1: may last for five to 10 minutes. Many may notice the feeling of falling during this stage of sleep, which may cause a sudden muscle contraction.
I am falling…
Raging that I and my loved ones who’ve never broken a law
Cannot be LEFT alone
To live out our lives in grace, dignity and citizenry
Pharaoh always kills the young
My muscles contract in Rachel shouts and screams
I am sleep deprived…I cannot dream…
It's like killing the dream before first REM stage.
“I can’t breathe”…
“I can’t breathe”…
Eric: “I can’t breathe!”
