Spoken Word

Spoken Word

Sunday, March 5, 2017

All Be Free! (The poem)




We left there on the run,
in the moonlight,
as his body swung,
from a tree,
in plain sight,
his skin hung,
like bark from a hickory,
charred now into unfamiliarity,
We left there on the run,
We didn't look behind us,
We avoided the sun,
We didn't have a compass,
We left there on the run,
Not a second to kill,
Only ourselves to save,
with hounds at our heels,
An escaping slave,
On the run,
We saw their intention,
in the way that he hung,
meant to scare us into retention,
but without the effect,
for which they'd longed,
hoping they wouldn't detect,
that we had gone,
We left there on the run,
between thicket to thicket,
from the swamp, where we'd begun,
No sound only crickets,
with just rags, and welps on our back,

No tickets,

No tags,

No gun,

No time to wonder what we'd become,
freedom was on the horizon,
concepts we could only fathom,
until we left there on the run,
We moved swiftly from slavery to War,
To Reconstruction,
Like returning through the No return door,
into the Great Migration,
We left there on the run,
Fleeing into self-determination,
leaving the shared Southern crop,
on the Plantation,
Letting the hoe, the plow, and sickle drop,
And running to Northern discrimination,
Peonage,
And mass incarcerations,
We left there on the run,
Singing, we shall overcome,
S o m e d a y,
With either a pencil, a pen, or a gun,
Until they killed our leaders,

One by one,

Gone our eloquent speakers,

Our chosen sons,

Our chiefs,

We wanted to run,

We stopped for grief,

and dropped our gunny sack,
Only once, to nap
and fill our lungs with crack,
Our chosen exile,
Government subsidized,
And ready to sell,
Government supplied,
cash crop needing slaves to bale,
We waxed foul,
They caught us trapped,
in Public housing,
Disenfranchised,
and herded to jail,
by the dozens, 
Labeled criminal element,
Even when we wasn't.
Patter roller come,
Kill our sons without flinching,
Claim they had a gun,
Just another lynching,
We left there on the run,
Degree in hand,
We moved from intern,
to self made man,
to doctorate, to resident,
from uneducated to learned,

To President,

And now we've come,

To where we'll be,

We'll march, but we won't run,

No more until every man

Is free


victori--©


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