With the spirit of a lion
And the conviction of Zapata,
You walk through doors held open by Patti
Smith
And Louis Armstrong
I see you shaking all
over
Like you’ve got somethin’ that
Just won’t leave you alone.
I can see the electricity around you;
Is this what a halo looks like?
And then: your voice
Something more like a force of nature
Like earth. No, not earth—Tierra, that’s better.
The loudspeaker of every Guerilla army throughout history.
Singing like every moment is the most crucial.
Like the revolution is here, at your doorstep
And at mine. Like a B-Boy reincarnation
Of Cesar Chavez. Singing like exhaustion
In the eyes and in the voice of a friend,
They’re foreclosing on the house. I’ll
make it Figure something out.
Singing like sirens
‘cept this time, they’re our sirens.
It sounds like,
All of the pigs and all of the vultures
Had better run and hide. “Cause your days are numbered,
And this is where it all stops.
It sounds like
eighty thousand people
Shut down traffic in the streets of San
Francisco
We felt like we could take over the city
And maybe we could’ve. Perhaps she would
have welcomed us.
It fills one with
awe:
Realization that you are responsible for the
fear
And the freezing of a city’s entire police
force;
If only for a while.
Well, not just you
But when eighty thousand come together
With a singular common anger,
You stop being a crowd of individuals and
become
Something more like a force of nature.
Like a flood, that washes away all decay.
Like a hurricane where the only people who
lode their homes are
CEOs.
Like those moments when our Mother vomits
Gulf waters and levees
break and it sounds like, Basta.
Enough of men
behind masks sweeping
Revolution under the rug.
Enough of men behind desks measuring
Out our lives as thy please.
Enough: This Evening, Nat Turner usurps the
throne.
Enough: This Morning, Fred Hampton will
awake to the sound of
drums
and not bullets.
Singing straight
from your viscera
sending chills up my spine
just like when I was 11 and
I didn’t get it
but I could feel it.
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