Detroit Public School – Black History Month
Close the doors and pull down the shades
It’s February again and the teacher has some words to exchange
She wants to know – What do I know about black history?
And then if it’s not much
she is going to put us back in touch
But she’s in a rush
cause she’s only got an hour and she needs to say so much
Its hard to believe but at the tender age
The time when I’m so easily influenced
She wants me to know the past
so that it can always influence
Whatever it is that I’m doing
She wants me to find a dream and pursue it
Hold my head up high and have some respect for myself
“the knowledge that you receive is a weapon itself”
And just like a soldier moving in stealth the underground railroad
Never got away from myself
I know that a book is a tool
That lays ignorance and cowardice to waste
A book is a mode of travel to get you out a bad place
A pen and pad are like a sword and shield
Or more like brick and mortar
And I’m ready to build
Please don’t find me to heavy I did this all for you
put my mind and my sanity on the line all for you
I use to write in the dark now I write in the light
And fight so hard to make sure that I’m doing it right
And I’m making the rules so even if I’m breaking the rules
I feel that I should have the first right to refuse
To do anything other than to be black and die
Instead I just get up of my little cot my little pity spot
And I stand or I sit
I ran or I writ or I wrote
That even if I’m no politico
I know that it was important
For people to die to vote or to be put into jails
Prison in such
for refusing to touch
or enroll in the militias and such
Please soujourn soujorner
and win for these losers
And if you can do it under pressure
then I will accept
The first right of refusal
The right to defy
Those who deny
That I can say what I want
In the way that write
Just as long as my song shows that It came with a gift
I used the powers of good and I came to uplift
So in that moment in time in the back of my mind
I’m thinking about the movie as she’s pressing rewind
And I’m trying to find
the love for mankind
As I’m not sure if she showed me my soul
or the twoness of it
If I could march like a King
Am I Fredrick Douglass
Could I be one of the Pantha’s brothers
I’m so conflicted by this point in the lesson
Yet she is steadily pressing
me to answer some questions
Will you fulfill a destiny fore written in failure?
Or will you write your own story and drop it in a mailer?….
What was I supposed to tell her?
What would you have told her
Fall off into mediocrity and hear her every day for 15 years
standing over my shoulder
Now I’m getting these words off my chest and they feel bigger than boulders
But this is the only way that I can see to give
Her efforts some closure
end
since writing this poem i have to shed light on a sad situation
someone took a picture of a dps book depository http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedguy49/312196513/in/photostream/
i don’t know how accurate this is i am not a journalist but this is heart rending i’m going to see if i can post the picture below
dps books
i hope this isn’t true ya’ll hit me up and say it isn’t so
