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
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