Sunni Patterson reciting her poem, We Made It So I’m from a stock that pitch cocktail bombs and hand grenades. We pour cayenne pepper around the perimeter of a building to keep the police dogs at bay. I’m the Panther Party in the Desire Housing Projects in New Orleans. I’m nigga turning the gun on the National Guards. Take a long, long look. I’m a cook in the kitchen asking the missus to taste the dinner take a long, long sip, ‘cuz death ain’t always this good. It’s eyes popping out they sockets. It’s a lifeless body rocking backwards and forwards. It’s a boy stabbed forty-seven times in front the church house. It’s a man forty-three years old, stuffing his penis in a nine-year-old girl’s mouth, naw, death don’t always taste good just don’t sound like something I want to eat often. I hear them say it was like a train came through the room left mama so depressed she was unable to move until this one day. A few months after the hurricane. Husband and child found the trinity bloody in bed. His wife, his son, his other daughter was dead, and on the end table there was a letter that read, “I couldn’t stay here, not for one minute longer, and it made no sense for me to leave here alone, ’cause who would take care of my babies with they mama gone?” I’m telling you, death ain’t always good. It’ll leave you fending for water and food. It’ll riddle up your body in the Audubon Ballroom They’ll El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz you, crown you King, then dethrone you in a Lorraine Hotel. They’ll disfigure your body to where folks can’t tell if you Emmett Till or not, tell the mama, “Keep that casket open, let all the world see it ain’t just burning in Mississippi.” Hell, it’s hot wherever you be, from the rooftop to the cell block, step on up to the auction block, bend over, touch your toes, son, show your teeth, lift her titties, examine his balls, now, this damn near sound like a hip-hop song, but it’s slavery at its peak, a circus for all the freaks. They’ll warn you, “Caution when you speak,” can’t afford the truth to leak, but will say “Blessed are the meek and are the ones who make peace and are the ones who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,” for we say theirs is the kingdom, earth is their inheritance. So no matter how treacherous, they’ll try to trap us in them trenches, they’ll dig deeper ditches, but all that matters is this: Which side will we pick, which path will we choose. either win or lose, ‘cuz death don’t come in vain, not for us to remain enslaved or our spirits to remain in cages. It comes so we might be courageous to fulfill our obligation to our God and all creation, and stand in determination, able to look death in the face and say we made it, we made it, we made it, we made it.
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 09:33:39 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015