Prayer for Assata

Prayer for Assata

By Walidah Imarisha

Assata
Face wiped clean of age
Cheekbones you could fall off of
Body that flows like water over worn rocks
Dreadlocks splayed out and open
Trailing the scent of soothing aloe and sage

I wish Assata
Many beautiful lovers
Lovers who smell
Of earth
Warmed by the sun
Rather than despair that stinks
Like urine-stained tenement halls

She has known love
On the run
As sweetly intense
And dangerously fragile
As life at the barrel of the gun

Kiss twin scars directly beneath
Her breats
Where two bullets
Are nestled still –
Sleeping infants.

I wish her lovers
With mango pulp between their teeth
And grape-stained hands
That soak into her

A lover with shango in the hips
And the other orishas under the tongue
Their love fried platanos for breakfast,
And freshly cut coconut before bed

Cat-eyes
That lean over her body
As hands move
Reading signs and songs
Etched in bark and cloth and skin
Praying dancing worshipping
The length of her arms
And the heft of her flesh
Cowry shells pressed hot
Between two bodies with ancient souls

I wish Assata
Someone
Who lets her be
Simply solely wholly
Assata
Comrade mother neighbor
That strong limbed sista
Who can sure move those thighs
At a house party
Not a face on a wanted poster
Not public enemy number one
Joanne Chesimard
Dead or alive
One million dollar bounty on her head
To this day

Thunder storms
Beat palm trees
And peel Che Guevara posters
Off the sides of Havana buildings
In the middle of the night
The screams of
Murdered
Stolen
Broken
Comrades pull her dreads back
To lick her neck
Tongues dripping defeat
Until they deafen her

But silence scars as well
Wounds left by over two years
Of solitary confinement
Of only hate-filled guards
Day in and day out
Day in and day out
Day in and day out
Days where she forgot what a kind word was
When she almost forgot she could speak
The wounds of silence
Silence can cut deeper than a machete
Cane stalks bleeding
Sugar blood

In prison
It was fugitive love
They were slaves
Catching a taste of sweetness
Bore fruit ripe and swollen
This child
Of hope and wings
Of water and wind
Of thundering bars and stinging darkness
Let us caress freedom
And kiss it deeply on its full lips
Let us be human for an hour
For these snatched seconds
Let us remember
What we look like in loving eyes
And Assata always now look
Into loving eyes.

Prophet

Prophet

By Walidah Imarisha

Today I met a prophet
getting off the Q train
the smell of piss and pot smoke
succulent and heavy.
My heart was torn and swollen.
Today I needed a miracle
to make it through.

For so long
I have had no religion
save the love we are able to steal.

His laughter cackled crackled curled
punctuated scriptures
pierced my self-righteous disbelief
in anything more judgmental than myself.

Crucified in new york
stoned in south central
or shot 41 times in jerusalem.
The only things I held sacred
were the laughter of children
the scream of rebellion
your body moving beneath my hands
sweet sacrament.

My temple was obliterated
burned to the ground.
Our stolen love
ran dry
like god’s forgiveness
like Palestinian children’s tears.
I am drowning in this flood
sent to purify.

It was we who bled
in jerusalem and tiennamen vieques east harlem
and my bedroom
I was left hanging from your barbed wire cross.

Tagging

Tagging

By Walidah Imarisha

“shit, you gotta tag trains”
he said, twirling a spray paint can like a six shooter.
“yo, walls are nice and all,
but how else people as far as st. louis and cali
goin to see your name?
now that's fucking immortality.”

traintracks cross cross this country like the river lethe
where truth is what is remembered,
imbedded into the soil and into our minds
into our history
as mighty engines rumble over
uneasingly sleeping ground.

outlaws used to rob trains,
conquering symbols of the expanding force of civilization
that carried them to the west
in its belly,
like unwanted children,
vomiting them onto unfaimiliar ground,
only to have them return in a prodigal blaze of bullets
and perform manifest destiny
on the cargo that slept in its belly,
where they had refused to sleep.

one graf artist said
“i can't afford no billboards,
this is my billboard.”

one slave said
“here is your freedom,”
holding a loft a gun…
but others preferred to make their voices heard
through the soles of their feet rather than the barrels of rifles.
their feet
which metamorphisized into wheels
as they rolled through the underground railroad
liberating property
not as outlaws
but as contraband.
they stole themselves in plantation hold-ups.

and wasn't john henry trying to hold up progress
when this big ole black man challenged a train to a duel?
they had to use that steam-powered powerful engine to push his dead body
off of the tracks
he laid
with his two
slave
hands.
they dumped his body on the side of the road,
imported asian labor to drive rails into his still warm shell,
the blood from his burst heart
seeping into the ground,
mixing with the culture and screams
of stolen land
stolen red land
while chinese exclusion laws were forced to build
the industrial revolution
on john henry's corpse.
riding trains over him untilhe disappeared, 
until he became a breathing part of the earth
rails expanding like lungs,
breathing out locomotive trains,
which during the depression transported hoboes
from one end of the country to the other,
in a period where times were hard for everyone…
and a whole lot harder
for some.
ask the scottsboro boys
or the one remaining
because when these black men tried to ride the rails
to escape crushing southern poverty,
laced with sharecropping destinies,
they ended up at the end of a court room noose.

freedom of movement comes with a price
for those who are still
contraband
just as spray paint cans are contraband
for those who live in a place with no free walls,
only blank walls,
only prison walls,
so static and lifeless you long to see paint
and words and pictures fly by
you long to see your self fly by in a blur,
flying off box cars and coloring the countryside and cities at every stop,
dripping pieces of sweat and fear and pride
onto the blood-soaked stolen land
where once outlaws dared to defy
the unquestioned faceless authority of the train tracks,
which cut this nation like a surgeon's blade…
just as nightly train yards are defiled
by voices screaming to be heard
from tags that rumble across the country
etched into the sides of manifest destiny..
now that's
fucking
immortality.

by walidah imarisha

The sky’s the Limit

The sky’s the Limit

By Walidah Imarisha

The unfinished revolution
Borne of the streets
Blood pours down the concrete
In turn
Birthing tracks in a studio
Laid down on wax.

Manifesting tell-tell stories,
Duplicating and recreating
The entire color spectrum.

Visions of the Brown Berets
Haunted by the CIA,
Undulating     vibrating     penetrating
The beat masturbating to itself
And in turn inseminating segments of the population
Vietcong guerrilla commando fighting style,
Staggering through a mind field
Caught unawares
Kamikaze situations
Night falls
Belly crawls through the tall grass.

Looped it with an SP 1200
Like the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Clearing out the stale empty posturings
Of this almost lost
Or perhaps a lost and found generation.
Turn the station
And find static.
The tell-lie-vision spews me back at myself
In stereo surround sound
Surrounded
Fast closing in
Hit the dirt or assume the position,
Makes no difference.

Do not attempt to control us
Because we are in control of the control
Ciphering with the speed of a raised fist
Like this was the 68 Olympics.

And we’re bombing cities and bombing buildings
Spraypaint aerosol warfare
Twist off the top
Never stopped
To read the hand writing on the wall.
With blood in my eye
George Jackson resurrected
But to be corrected by the department of corrections
Is akin to being overruled by empty objections.
Cause for pause
Being Mumia Abu-Jamal
Still sitting in a cell.

Who volunteers for a trip to the jungles of Chiapis?
The print of the Zapitistas mark me
And with sully on my forehead
I can’t hope to stop this.

Increase the insurrection
Attica Attica
Turntables spin with the prestige of a mack 10
More or less deadly
And we become the repository for chains left
Unbroken.
The beat drops
And the mic slinks through these streets
Twisting around this nation’s larynx
Sanity cracks
Strange fruit
Hanging from Detroit lampposts
Hypercrossed like stars
And a load too heavy to be laid down
Drowns out the silent screams of burning Buddhist monks
And revolutionary shot dead while they slept
And children who’ve never wept
And thanks to modern tricknology,
They are mass marketed
Circumcised and commodified for a larger audience.

And bebop is lost
And g-rock is king
And emcees talk about
Ayo, I rock the mic like Malik el-Shabazz
Dropping bombs like this was Vietnam…
But do you really?

You might rock the mic like Fidel Castroooooooo…
But if you a counterrevolutionary
Then COINTELPRO incineraries got Castro
Rolling over in his soon to be grave.
Fuck the DAT machine
Che Guevara stalking through the hills
But without making moves
Movement is lost
As are you.

Culture vultures perch on warheads
Waiting to drop something on your head
And you talk about how this mic here is sacred
But you desecrate and defecate on the holy shrine of our ancestors
Talking bout
Straight from the hip or the shoulder
But when Huey Newton slipped
Who caught him?
Uncle Sam
With arms wide open.

Burrowing down into the belly of the beast
Underground
Ripping from the inside out until I can breathe
Finally understanding the powers that be are terrified
Because
WE BE THE POWER
And if I play this track backwards
Voices scream for more than apple pie
Or a cabin in the sky
But I decide to just
Let
It
Drop…

And the record is not over yet
The record is not over yet
The revolution is not over yet.

Wade in the Water

Wade in the Water

For the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Iraq, Aghanistan, Colombia, South Central, North Philly and every other spot on the globe people are resisting the sharp teeth of genocide.

By Walidah Imarisha

I.

There was still water
standing
6 ft deep
in people’s homes
two weeks
after the flood.

Through waters laced
with chemicals
and human excrement
and bloated bodies,
black and brown people
went out every day
to save the kin
left behind,
shredded
and discarded.

King George said
“Let them eat flood water”
and they choked
on the watery ashes
of progress.

“Please”
he said
standing in a small canoe
floating in what remained
of the 7th ward
hands in the air
eyes trained on the hypnotic guns
of three officers
who minutes before had
fired 4 shots
that may or may not
have been warnings
“Please”
he said
heart heavy in his mouth
“I am looking for the body of my son
Let me find my son’s body.”

II.

The Mississippi River
was dragged in the 60s to find
the bodies of three civil rights workers
murdered
by the klan.
dozns of human remains were found
all black         all nameless
they were unimportant
to officials and bureaucracy and media coverage
and “good” race relations
so they were thrown back
to the river.
How many lives were submerged
until they stopped kicking?

The Mississippi is claiming the bodies
of the lynched
once again.

III.

Muddied rings still stain
houses halfway up
and the bodies of rotting dogs
still congeal in the stilted Louisiana sun.
In a town an hour outside of New Orleans
there are still corpses
unearthed
from their graves,
set free to float down the street.
An old man sits on his porch.
“I built this house
with my hands.
Lived here 58 years
With my wife
until she died two years ago.
I saw her casket
in the waters
two weeks ago.
No one will help me
put her back in the ground
so she can sleep.
Won’t anyone help me?”

IV.

DEARGOD PleASE HELP US
FEMA
DONT LeAVE US TO dIE
Read the graffiti on a house
That was completely surrounded
By water

Three weeks and no FEMA
Three weeks and no relief
Three weeks and no aid

“Yeah, they gave us sumthin,”
the brotha snorted,
dreads coiled and purring on his head.
He was one in boats
every day
taking people to the promised land
of higher ground.
“On the 5th day Red Cross
dropped some hard rock candy
on our heads.
Don’t let them tell you Red Cross
never gave us nuthin.”

And they gave them
National Guard and NYPD and US Foresty Dept.
and the INS and Border Patrol
and state troopers and US Marshalls
and the DEA and NY Corrections Officers
and detachments and battalions
and tanks
and automatic weapons and hummers
and curfew and work camps and concrete floors
and nightsticks
and blood and bullets
Don’t let them tell you they never gave us nuthin.

V.

The water has receded
and the human tide
trickles in.

An oldyoung woman
stands in her decomposing house,
black mold climbing up the walls,
coating baby pictures
and high school diplomas.
Her four daughters
run after their 11 collective children.
The grandmother
holds the youngest in her arms
and he is nothing
but wise eyes and heavy brow.
“Of course I’m staying,”
she hefts the tiny sage to the other hip.
“I don’t know what we will do
but this
is ours.
We won’t leave it.”

And she does not mean the cramped house
and dead yard out front.
She means this spark of hope
soggy
sputtering
but burning out
enuf space
to catch a breath.

Beautiful

Beautiful

By Walidah Imarisha

You
My ex partner
My sometimes lover
My always love
Are beautiful

I am in the midst of death
But that is just the way
Amerika
Smells
On a hot texas day

And I have to write this
Because I want to honor
A warrior
with the face of a child
if death row
can’t slice up a sacred heart
then I
have a lot of blood
to start pumping

touched my face
with willow tree hands
and said
look
a butterfly
just landed on your left cheek
it flew
out of your eye
don’t blink

Hold tight

solace

There are no third chances
with courts or compas

sanctuary

trust me
I trusted you
I know how ugly/beautiful you are
I have seen your scars
I have kissed all of your scars

Even our scars/stars
Are beautiful

And we
None of us
Not a one

We
will not be
Washed away

8.31.06 - For Hasan

8.31.06 - For Hasan

for the rebel spirit of hasan shakur

by Walidah Imarisha

No stay
There was no stay
We can’t stay
Here

II

Where is ossie
And why did he have to leave us
Because we need
A eulogy
For another shining black prince

III

29
years
old
too young
to be an ancestor
and too old
for this world

he’s gone onto a better place
said the bearded white man
at the candlelight vigil
outside of the prison
one candle for the
eight people
there

FUCK YOU

He fought for this place
He has moved on
But it is not to the peace
Of your white jesus
It is to the arms of the ancestors
And comfort
But he knows
Even in death
His work is not done

IV

107 degrees
black crayon melts
the words burn up
oh fuck
hasan
burned up
we lost again
did we

in the car
outside the funeral home
where they’re going to burn
him up
don’t cry
hasan said
this is yr show
so im sitting in this car
with all the windows rolled up
sweating instead of sobbing
writing
with a melting black crayon
staring at 11
bright-as-yr-blood mesh bags
full of all your worldly possessions

cuz u said
what does crying get you
waste of time and you never had
no time
to waste
so I don’t waste tears
words
or time
and its 6:45 pm
and at 5:58 we still had hope
and at 6:07 my stomach knotted
and I thought I would puke staring at the razor wire
and at 6:18 the press came out
and we knew
that this battle
was done
and you
were
wherever you are
in the sky
in the dirt
in my heart and fist
won’t stop
can’t stop
won’t ever let them
stop
you
I am mourning my loss
Because I wanted you here with us
To see where this revolution thang
Will lead
And I rage at their brutality
Vultures feeding on any black flesh
They happen to find
And they are never sated

But I know this is not
A victory
For them
Today
The first and the last
Time I saw you
You stared at me
With those world worn child eyes
And rumbled
Watch what I’m going to do
Whether they kill me or not
Watch what I’m gonna do
Ima make the ancestors proud

V

Welcome home, baby
I missed you
We’ve been waiting for you
Our arms are here for you
Stretching across the atlantic
And this time
No bars are going to stop us
You can rest

Only for a minute
Cause them
Back there
They still need you, baby

VI

Everyone has to leave this world
One way
The wise sistasage said
You leave in your sleep
Or strapped down on their table
But you leave

There is an African belief
That when you die in battle
Your spirit becomes a warrior
And continues to fight

If they thought hasan was fierce
Before
They have no idea what he can do
Let loose of the shackles of flesh
Joined with all the ancestors
Named and unnamed
Unleashed
A furious storm
A ferocious wind
The blood in your veins
Singing in your ears
Telling you
Yes
Yes
We can do this
He’s in the whirlwind now
And if they thought he was trouble
Before…

VII

an avenging
warrior spirit
there is joy
in this

He is a body
This is war
And there are bodies
There will be bodies
Either way
Fight or run
Confront or cower
Bare our teeths
Or grin and bear it
We will die
It ain’t like
We never seen blood before
Fight for freedom
Or live this shadow existence
Of death

Hasan chose life

VIII

I wish
I coulda
Written
You free
But words
Are no good
For getting free
Just for writing directions
So others can follow
But they don’t lead
The way
Only your feet do that

IX

We will honor
You
With tears
And
Bullets.

That’s the only eulogy
You wanted