After George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson and Georgia Jackson
23 and one.
23 and me.
genetically, who can say
my DNA doesn't make up the roots growing into my so-called cement coffin.
Black fingers pour from below this wicked cot
blistered with enough semen stains that I have taken
to sleeping in embryo.
In other words I miss my momma.
home cooked hugs
and a touch of patty cake.
momma's hands.
momma's hands.
I stare into the fluorescent light until
it is Black enough like momma's hands.
Blood in my eyes
and my spine has grown colder than my skin can manage grief
but I manage a love letter to my books.
the binds that hold me.
99 manuscripts for each fingerprint
my shoulders lose to amnesia.
the books, their music sends me.
between Fanon's grenade
and Mao's bleeding sword
my body sings back vigor and a vow as nursery rhymes.
I am a man, my kidneys holler.
I am a man, my spleen roars.
In other words, the revolution is skin deep.
dragon scales bloom from the inside
when hunger is a kiss.
and my bowels deliver the daily bread.
10 commandments in filth
spread over these walls for every 1000 cuts
across my belly that know intimately
that I cannot be broken.
this Black man can not be broken.
unlike this bolted door that forgets it is also colonized.
this Black man cannot be broken unlike the echos
of calluses gnawing on my genitals
left from the blows of wolves, and pigs alike.
they are both afraid of my analysis.
they both know their masters will not keep them
once the walls of jericho, attica and pendleton tumble down.
it is the sun's declaration.
even if they hide us away from her satisfaction
we are still the children of light with darker wings
and bite, fight, flare and flame.
in other words, in my mother's words
about my brother's resurrection as a loaded gun,
"they'll know they made one righteous African man extremely angry"
and from this dark hole
the people will coate their fury in my flame
to style a dance of burning cities.
the moon, our priestess.
we are summoned by her rivers to move the stars, in tongue and in step
from the power of August nights.
Bois Caïman begot nirvana first.
and the sun shall have its satisfaction.
the earth will then feed on the fat lips of emperors
who didn't know that dragons, panthers and machete's
all fast before the fray.
because victory is a belly full
and I am fucking starving.