Griot's Journal

See the crimson sunset seething against the white Cloud scant of history, a blazing fire In the salt sea of my veins, dark shade in the night, Voiceless and invisible, my desire To be began in her mantled shame, in her cry For descendants to raise justice plea to the sky And so in the month when Caesar was to die, I Bloodied already from mother's womb came Shouting through the unshaven forest a life cry Combating the crude stigma on our name Grandmother, warrior queen, I left the cage That made my father polite in his native rage. And here among the stolen emblems of our past Rude-boy, guerilla-radical I come To the dark, crouched neath pillars of grief, sound the blast And tell my Goliath that this freedom Will not be shackled, whipped, restrained, it's absolute: The recovery of manhood, mortal pride ... loot. Too long on bended knees my people walked in shame On roads their forebears built with blood, no schools To raise their status from the prison bars. Lame Of ego, bereft of claim ... they made rules We had no power to amend, the weight of state Despite, rested heavily ... burdening our fate. So I now shaken from childhood squalor and rag With vehement wonder have turned the page To history's jubilation against the race logged Fore their scholars' gloating eyes, and wage My war to bring some conscience to the shining hilt Where sinners unrepentant tremble at their guilt. O hear me, black as Marcus Maroon dream, I am Not the one to carry any cross, I Am too young to die ... shuddering... a bleatless lamb My heart may hide where the wanton winds sigh Look for me in the Orisha's moon ... my mission In latent storms endures, rending thy transgression