Urban Juke Joint

I'll be reading (or spitting, like my sons say) at Urban Juke Joint in the Baha'i Unity Center on Friday, October 29th; 53 East 11th Street, nyc; doors open @ 8p, show starts @ 9p and it's free. The piece below called For Us will most definitely be on the menu! And depending on the crowd, vibe and even requests, I might also serve some of my more popular pieces like Had To Do It, Poetry, A Stench in Jamaica, Tuesday and Waterchild. Hope to see y'all there!


In this place
This sacred place
We held so dear in our hearts
And in our collective consciousnes
This bothered ground we called our home;
Our reason to fight and fight again
All in the name of pan-African salvation
We stand in truth
Having resolved our struggle with the pale one
And with one another
To now simply be
Each of us
Doing what we were called upon to do
As dedication to the promise
Those before us had made
Before relinquishing their very last breaths
To aborted uprisings and public castrations

In this place
With our hands clutched together
Bowing our heads
As we call upon those who await us
For the renewal of our plight
We so lovingly give homage to
This borrowed soil
On which we've chosen
As our point of reference
Without division of any kind
But with the conviction of one force
One people
One objective
Together
In the name of spiritual egression

It is at this moment
That we make the decision
To return to our most basic of rituals
Uninterrupted
As in before captivity and social buffoonery
To look on and ahead
Without the meaning of 'I'
That this day
We begin at the end
At the beginning again
Our heels fixed firmly
In our agreement to transition
Having learned from our past
Leaving behind the chains that once defined us
And lift our heads towards the All Knowing
To finally
Once and for all
After being forced to despise our own
As we sing the praise of justice and forever
Give the sign
Then disappear.*




*From my book of poems, The Dredlocks Tree