These are historic times. But then, what times haven't been? The Seven Foot Poet keeps us anchored not just in the present, the immediate past and the forseeable future, but orients us in the dimensionless expanse of time inhabited by our ancestors, our future hopes, and those yet to come.
Click the link below to hear the Seven Foot Poet perform this original work.
To the coming ancient new children
What is this world what is this time what is this realm that you are being born into?
Is it the day we never thought would occur? no one dared to think it even possible?
How could we have imagined it would come and yet we did?
We fought survived worked and dreamed for this day to come
Right from the start in 1441
Is today the day when chattel slavery is done?
Weez free! Weez free!
It’s an historic day! History is being made!
Some of us didn’t see that Juneteenth peonage share cropping incalculable lynching
And the illusion of inclusion from Reconstruction was still to come
Perilously maneuvering a mistaken quest to assimilate and become one
With the people who did and do perpetrate evil.
To the coming ancient new children
What is this world what is this time what is this realm that you are being born into?
Is it the day when Joe Louis beat Max Schmeling -- the Brown Bomber put it on ‘em
When Jesse Owens “proved” -- “once and for all” -- to the aryans and the world
On the biggest international Olympic stage for everyone to see
That we won – we beat them at their own game!
We are “just as good as” or “equal to” them.
It’s an historic day! History is being made!
Weez equal! Weez equal!
Some of us didn’t see the insidious truth that it would be a lap-dog-chasing-its-tail-loop:
Jackie Robinson, Althea Gibson, Eldrick Woods, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Weaver Constance Baker Motley, Carl Stokes, Thurgood Marshall, Patricia Harris, Vanessa Williams, Colin Powell, Douglass Wilder, Mae Jemison, Condoleezza Rice
Try as we might “the first black” syndrome had now gone airborne and taken flight!
Despite significant cognitive functioning the masses
And some in the conscious community
Still choose to not see and mistakenly maintain that progress must be
Rising to the pinnacle of another people’s approval
Caution to be sure it is fatal striving conniving dying for a terminal degree
“Harvard has ruined more black minds than cheap whiskey.
How many times over and over will we “prove” we are “just as good as” or “equal to”
And how many times will we mistakenly call that slight of hand finesse progress?
Such progress is a pox or a plague because it equates to
Merely serving or entertaining in an extraordinary exemplary manner other people
Winning competitions that other people sanction
Advancing other peoples’ cultural traditions and interests
Promoting other peoples’ beliefs
Furthering other peoples’ institutions
And all the while being defined and defiled and minimized as “other”.
To the coming ancient new children
What is this world what is this time what is this realm that you are being born into?
MAAFA Arab incursion enslavement conversion begun in 631?
DepokChopraOprahOldNewAgeTranscendentalIncidentalTheft
Suppose to not see the same and call the repackaged status quo -- change?!?!
Consider do we give our labor and resources to ourselves and our institutions?
Consider do we educate our own children with our own curriculum culture and wisdom?
Consider do we pray to our own true God – speak our own true language?
If we do the change is true if not then warning that change may be strange and odd.
Don’t let anyone tell you green is blue so you should be happy too
From the first incursion to the first slave ship
The goal has never been for you to prove you can wield the whip
The goal has never been for a mountain to be a hill
The goal has never been to run a death machine to “prove” you can kill.
To the coming ancient new children
What is this world what is this time what is this realm that you are being born into?
It is a beautiful day.
It is a wonderful time to be Afrikan.
The world and universe are filled with love for among and between Afrikan people.
The Sun shines warmly in the sky.
The Stars and Moon are brilliant and each night bloom.
There is a river and radiance in the waters awakening the genius of black children.
Even in the coldest winter ever or if it takes 2000 seasons
The healers will come like an irritated genie
Defeating the psychopathic racial personality.
Yes it will be a great and mighty walk even if we must learn the sankofa movement
during a time of intellectual warfare with the wretched of the earth!
Listen for the echoes of the old darkland to spark an afrocentric idea
Even if your legs are crippled no more excuses, excuses
Spit black fire put the devil on the cross
Pick up a walker and appeal to reclaim our stolen legacy.
In civilization or barbarism there is a pan-afrikan connection.
Take that message to the people
From palmares to the republic of new afrika to the star of deep beginnings.
Let your zoom be swift and tell them there is unity and struggle
Self-healing and therapy in old teachings from Africa.
Even if the preliminary challenge is getting them merely facing mount Kenya
Know the souls of black folks are breaking the chains of psychological slavery.
Remember let the circle be unbroken and that:
“You have chosen to be Afrikan and you have come from the Spirit world
And you have a job to do and that job is to avenge our ancestors.”
By Kemet Mawakana (aka The Seven-Foot Poet)
Peace (when appropriate) War (when necessary)
Copyright 2008.
Kemet Mawakana (aka “The Seven-Foot Poet”) is a highly acclaimed spoken-word artist, and has published two books A . . . Z . . . Infinity and Crucifixion of My Soul. The collective body of his works presented in www.blackagendareport.com and www.voxunion.com are in tribute to Listervelt Middleton, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, and “For The People”. Currently, he is a facilitator at AYA Educational Institute (www.ayaed.com) in Atlanta, Georgia and can be reached at sevenfootpoet@gmail.com.
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