Africans in bondage, sold as stock
on Wall Street auction blocks,
now bonds & stocks
line the block of Wall Street.
On these same streets,
Black men shine shoes for White men
who work in offices on Wall Street.
Down the block, spirits of Africans
bring the towers down underground
where their bones lie.
Twin Towers built high, one hundreds stories,
one hundred languages and separations,
drop hard like the Towers of Babel,
we mock God, check ya’ Bibles,
“Babylon goin’ fall,�
when this empire retires
which side will you be on.
How these Black folk don’t care
Arab people killed for Black gold?
Can’t they see that we used to be Black gold,
sold and purchased
for this capital purpose,
stole for our service,
we built this stolen land on our backs.
While the whole world protests attacks on Iraq,
my people still waiting for an end
to the war on the Blacks.
African people, remember when the Axis of Evil was Compton, Chicago and Brooklyn,
we been suspects for terrorism,
COINTELPRO’ed, detained and imprisoned
unmentioned women and men
with death sentences, Societal Menaces
these Boys in the Hood
clock blocks, sell rocks
to end up on cell blocks.
And we supposed to care
that Ground Zero looks like Beirut,
when Haiti looks like Beirut,
the Congo looks like Beirut,
Beirut looks like Beirut,
and the South Bronx still looks like Ground Zero.
Don’t no heroes come when I dial 911,
only Klansmen’s grandsons with handguns.
They got us hold up for ransom,
families raise bail funds in vast sums,
they keep telling me these police check are random,
random like that lottery,
911 on 911, please don’t lie to me,
CNN is fiction like the Odyssey.
The New York Post & Fox News is the truth
like corner-store-quarter-waters is real juice,
look at how they poison our youth:
bus stations, asthma, cocaine, OE, AIDS,
we face chemical warfare all day, everyday,
biological terrorism,
School children given Ritalin,
lead poisonin’ in the project buildings,
McDonald’s in the Harlem Hospital,
Listeria in the bodegas,
bacteria in our babies bellies,
we born felonies,
We the reason they made Homeland Security.
Society made us, the projects sedate us,
the TV keeps telling us
this ghetto existence is famous.
We smoke trees to get
closer to nature, closer to god,
I know cats that hate to live where they live
‘cause where they live,
either you’ve swallowed a roach
or smoked a roach,
either way, the ghetto goes by sullenly,
suddenly, we offered American unity,
America, we don’t need ya’ unity,
we been family, sleep close,
wake up with our little cousin’s toes in our nose,
we beautiful people,
the sun love us.
For now, here’s the plan:
Keep the little ones close.
Turn off those TV sets.
Keep ya’ fams out these newsstands
or they too may think
that the sniper was a Black man.
Kahlil Al Mustafa won first place in the Nuyorican poetry slam 2002, and is a member of the Uptown Club of the YCL.
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Dynamic Magazine
