Reflections After The June 12th March Of Disarmament

I have come to you tonite out of the depths
of slavery
from white hands peeling black skins over
america;

I have come out to you from reconstruction eyes
that closed on black humanity
that reduced black hope to the dark
huts of america;

I have come to you from the lynching years,
the exploitation of black men and women by
a country that allowed the swinging of
strange fruits from southern trees;

I have come to you tonite thru the
delaney years, the du bois years, the
b.t. washington years, the robeson
years, the garvey years, the
depression years, the you can’t eat
or sit or live just die here years,
the civil rights years, the black power
years, the black nationalist years, the
affirmative action years, the liberal
years, the neo-conservative years;

I have come to say that those years
were not in vain; the ghosts of our
ancestors searching this american dust for
rest were not in vain, black women
walking their lives in clots were not
in vain, the years walked
sideways in a foresaken land were not
in vain;

I have come to you tonite as an equal,
as a comrade, as a black woman
walking down a corridor of tears,
looking neither to the left or the right,
pulling my history with bruised
heels,
beckoning to the illusion of america
daring you to look me in the eyes to
see these faces, the exploitation of a
people because of skin pigmentation;

I have come to you tonite because no people
have been asked to be modern day people
with the history of slavery, and still
we walk, and still we talk, and
still we plan, and still we hope and
still we sing;

I have come to you tonite because there are
inhumanitarians in the world. they are not
new. they are old. they go back into history.
they were called explorers, soldiers, mercenaries,
imperialists, missionaries, adventurers,
but they looked at the world for what
it would give up to them and they violated
the land and the people, they looked
at the land and sectioned it up for
private ownership, they looked at the
people and decided how to manipulate
them thru fear and ignorance, they looked
at the gold and began to hoard and
worship it;

I have come to you because it is time
for us all to purge capitalism from
our dreams, to purge materialism
from our eyes, from the planet earth
to deliver the earth again into the hands
of the humanitarians;

I have come to you tonite not just for the stoppage
of nuclear proliferation, nuclear
plants, nuclear bombs, nuclear
waste, but to stop the proliferation
of nuclear minds, of nuclear generals
of nuclear presidents, of nuclear scientists,
who spread human and nuclear waste
over the world;

I come to you because the world needs to be
saved for the future generations who must
return the earth to peace, who will not
be startled by a man’s/woman’s skin color;

I come to you because the world needs sanity
now, needs men and women who will
not work to produce nuclear weapons,
who will give up their need for excess
wealth and learn how to share the
world’s resources, who will never
again as scientists invent again just
for the sake of inventing;

I come to you because we need to turn our
eyes to the beauty of this planet, to the
bright green laughter of trees, to the beautiful
human animals waiting to smile their unprostituted smiles;

I have come to you to talk about our inexperience
at living as human beings, thru death marches and cam
thru middle passages and slavery
and thundering countries raining hungry faces;

I am here to move against
leaving our shadows implanted on the
earth while our bodies disintegrate in
nuclear lightning;

I am here between the voices of our ancestors
and the noise of the planet,
between the surprise of death and life;

I am here because I shall not give the
earth up to non-dreamers and earth molesters;

I am here to say to you:
my body is full of veins
like the bombs waiting to burst
with blood.
we must learn to suckle life not
bombs and rhetoric
rising up in redwhiteandblue patriotism;

I am here. and my breath/our breaths
must thunder across this land
arousing new breaths. new life.
new people, who will live in peace
and honor.