She is the Amistad,
Transporting Them
To a foreign land.
Their wrists and tongues
Will be tied for decades
With the same hemp
Nooses that will hang them
Children will breed children
For decades thinking That fucking
Is the only way to Salvation
(When all they needed was a
black Barbie doll or a father
who cared), And the harder they fuck raw,
The closer (they think)
They'll be to Mother Africa,
With her deplorable conditions
And escalating HIV rates
A tragic homeland so forgotten
We think that naming our kids
Sharmeika, Tameika, or Tyrique
Is what it means to be Afrocentric;
A homeland so indistiguishible
We forget our luxuries and assume
We can live on a bowl of rice
And drink pure goat milk
As flies sting our eyes
And babies don't know
If they'll live or die
To see the red clay again.
The train roars past the Upper East Side
Like a an unfed rhino attacking
The undone rail system Indians
used to enslave Us in Africa.
The conductor says "Next stop is. . ."
And you can not
Hear the rest for his voice fades.
These are sad times where
A beggar is not really poor,
But the man with the
$135 Timberland boots,
$45 fitted ball cap,
And no job is.
We live in a pathetic society
Where we care
Too damn much
About things that will never matter.
Materialism is the source of salvation
but we will never find our way home.
The train goes several routes,
But the hood will only get us but so far.
