Chant Down American Babylon

(This is for Bob Marley and Kingston; for Robert O. Self and the Black Panthers; and mostly for the music industry and all those that contribute to its annual $7,000,000,000 income)


Chant down American Babylon
with their contracts of pointed fingers,
headlined with "I WANT YOU!"
Hungry for obsequious Negroes with
addictive personalities,
allergic to the dark
and medicated by virulent limelight.
Tasty.
Squeezed over contracts of alphabet soup.
And you
YES YOU
listen to these sleepers
and now Babylon owns you too.

Chant down American Babylon
with their hush policies on the truth.
If you strive for enlightenment of all who are worthy,
they'll use the strategies of Sun Tzu.
Teachers
thinkers
speakers
they'll erase your lyrics
if you don't swear by their Ingsoc.

Chant down American Babylon
who seeks to steal, kill and destroy
for the sake of entertaining many.
Teaching us queens to use our bodies
and our chicanery
to win over dudes until they chuck us for season 2.
Now listen up carefully because American Babylon wants you
YES YOU.

Chant down American Babylon
with a Gregorian-Igbo stew of drone and pulse.
Entrance all that will come to this million man march
where my people will sign contracts with truth.

Chant down American Babylon
that supplies the vulnerable
with sex, drugs and booze
and then calls over their friends in media
for a dehumanizing photo shoot.
Artists, they're using you.

Chant down American Babylon
and fill their ears with the hope of dark skin--
the most sultry hope there is--
a dark musicianship
part innate and part inherited.
Sing your dark songs of despair
conspiracy
of the inevitable coup d'etats
that will finally bring Babylon down.
Beleaguer Babylon,
for we will not wait for deliverance.

Chant it down children,
Babylon and all its slaves.
Make way for an old message through new prophets
and old prophets appearing from darkness
together
singing in monophonic concordance,
chanting down this American Babylon obstreperously.

Chant down American Babylon
you valiant,
beautiful children of Zion,
you sophisticated,
refined children of harmony.

The Race of Music

Music has no color. It's of a universal struggle. The song of the oppressed is also that of the oppressor; for if the oppressed sing of struggle and of change, they also sing of the oppressor's need for growth.

Music has no color. Music is unity like an upright bass; wood chocolate with cinnamon sprinkles. Ebony bow with cream hair. All singing together, sending waves into God's air.

Music has no color. Black notes on white paper, yellowed with age. Blue notes from a golden sax. Harmonica bends from pink lips darkened by tobacco's kiss.

Can you hear my color in stereo? All my colors? Mocha cafe au lait to your ears. Fried plantain with black seeds. Grease burning but damn, it's sweets.

Music is golden honey and skinned red knees. Music is pastel memories. Music is the whole rainbow as well as the colors you can't see...

the unknown

chiseled
the color of ancestors unknown
and i want you to teach me them.
be my warrior and reveal my tribes
and with learning hands i'll search deeper
tracing bloodlines
i etched in your back with fragile nails.
young warrior
so demanding.
i see the love-thirst in your eyes
skin-thirst
your thirst for sensuality.
i know what you're thinking
when i braid your cashmere,
playfully lingering at your nape,
seemingly thoughtless brush of your ear.
i know what you're thinking young warrior
because i can hear your djembe
beating polyrhythmically with my singing pheromones.
and now we're dancing
pushing & tugging
staring & looking away
ignoring & coming in a little too close,
all just to say one word...
"Yes"