Too Young For Slavery

by izeveryboyin

Posted to Poetry and Politics on 2004-03-07 12:31:00

They said I was too young to understand it all…
They said that 400 years meant nothing to me… too young to understand it all… the rich culture from which I sprung… wings outstretched in a pure mask of beauty and intensity.
They said I couldn’t understand Nat Turner, as he revolutionized the minds of slave owners with blood… and dedication… they said I was too young.
They said I couldn’t scream praise from pursed lips of pride for Toussaint L’Overture, his band of mighty Haitians as they massacred the French, the English, and the French again…
Freedom for the children and their mothers and fathers,
Rebirth for the children and their mothers and father,
But no peace for the children and their mothers and fathers… and I was too young to understand.
They said I didn’t know about the terrible pain… the haunting hand of nativism slamming down against us like some mighty roar of evil… that hides behind a Christian name… It was all our fault.
Mothers who slaughter their children…wild and mad like animals…
They see them better dead than slaves…
Better killed now… than die…
Slowly and painfully… die with a back crooked over from labor of every sort, speech slurred, mind warn… and generally afraid of life and the idea of freedom…
Freedom, you see… freedom for us was never real… always… always, always was it a dream.
We helped them lock us up in cages, and beat us till we breathe spurts of blood and thicker things…
Drained energy and wasted life on some bleak cause of… what is the word… “Justice” forgot what it means, although haven’t we all.
But no, I was too young to understand it all… too young to give a fuck about the plots marked with wooden crosses… all the lives lost in the cause…
All the poets and freedom fighters and intellectuals and working class, and poor folks and bums, all lost in the mire of hope and desperation.
Malcolm X spoke by any means necessary and we took it by force… we didn’t cry enough at his funeral, or scream forim that day he died…
We heard the gunshots… we saw him fall… We saw him clutch his chest and tumble….
“THEY’VE KILLED HIM!!!” His wife Betty cried.
Medger Evers met his fate with a blast, and we shook our heads and walked away. Martin Luther King lost his dream on a balcony waving…
ALL WE’VE EVER FUCKING DONE IS DIE!!
Die fighting for what has always been ours…
See I was too young to understand all this shit… way too young to comprehend it…
But the truth being… I could never be too young or too old…
Could never be too deep or to far…
Could never be anything at all… anything at all… anything at all…
Could never be a damned thing… but that shit I was always too young to understand.



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