8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Cue George Floyd

crying for his Black mother

for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

8 minutes and 46 seconds

George Floyd’s Black life belonged to Derek Chauvin;

he took it because it was his to take.

in Amerikkka Black life is police property

Black life is state property

Black lives do not matter here

all lives do not matter here.

so, come by here for 8 minutes and 46 seconds

if you’re not busy, Mother God.

8 minutes and 46 seconds

Come by here, Mama

fan the flames of resistance

in the hearts of your children.

cue the liberal sheep admonishing us

to sing Kumbaya to Jesus

and go back to sleep.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Cue Fox News telling its viewers

all the reasons George deserved to die.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

I heard George call for his mama

Kumbaya Mummah

in West Africa they say

the child not embraced by the village

will burn it down to feel its warmth.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

I heard George call for his mama

I guess she came

I guess she brought her sisters:

Mama Harriet and Sojourner

Fannie Lou Hamer and Audre Lorde.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Toni Morrison and Paule Marshall

not yet one full orbit round the ancestors’ sun

wondering why they have to return

to this scorched earth so soon!

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

I heard George call for his mama

I guess she came

I guess she brought her sisters with her.

Nanny of the Jamaican Maroons

Yaa Asentewaa, Queen Mother of Ejisu in Ghana

Queen Nzinga Mbandi of Angola

The Mino, Amazon Mothers of Dahomey

Sarraounia Mangou, who refused to surrender to French colonizers

Hausa Warrior Queen Amina of present day Nigeria

Queen Amanirenas, one-eyed Kakande of the Kushite armies

who fought Augustus Caesar and the Roman soldiers

to protect her province in Egypt from 27BC to 22BC

forcing a peace treaty for her people lasting three centuries.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

I heard George Floyd call for his mama

I guess she came, bringing with her

all three warrior queens from the Virgin Islands

Queen Mary, Queen Agnes and Queen Mathilde

Rebel Mothers who kept the fires burning in the Danish colonies

in the 1878 rebellion.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

We all heard George Floyd calling for his mama

I guess she came

I guess she woke the children from their slumber

children of all races, creeds and colors,

children angry, sad, lost, crying

children marching with Black Lives Matter signs

children shouting “I can’t breathe”

in all 50 states of the union.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Alienated children looting

smashing and

defacing property

cue for the virtue signaling

from liberal media

ready to gaslight us

back into silence.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Come by here, Mother God

here, in the mouth of this dragon

where Black life is still white property

where all Black action or inaction are deemed criminal

and Black crimes are punishable by

death     without trial.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Come by here, Mummah

here, where in 1865 they started the new doctrine:

your Black children—still property, but without value

yet expect these children to value another man’s property

in the height of righteous rage and

under the threat of annihilation.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

They dangle shiny things in the faces of your children

imprinting the notion that things mean more than their Black lives

yet in 2020 for every dollar that the white households make

Black households make 59 cents

in this great Amerikkkan de-mockery.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Come by here, Mother God

come help us teach the children

which knowledge to steal

and where to store it

how to loot wisdom and understanding

and when and where to deploy them.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Come here, now!

Mother-of-George and all our mothers

come show the children why massah’s tools

will only bury them under massah’s house.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Come by here           see the American president

ordering the beating of peaceful protestors

for a photo-op on the steps of a church—with a Bible

turned backwards, held upside down.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Come here, Mother, if you’re not busy

to this place where #45 mocks our deaths

condemning even peaceful resistance as thuggery

cue the American Gestapo hiding their names and badge numbers

to kill us in anonymity, and still this genie will not go back into the bottle.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Cue white race soldiers infiltrating the resistance

causing havoc, undermining righteous rage

agent provocateurs of white nationalism

trying to change the narrative to suit their own agendas.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

The sitting US president is one tweet away

from ordering the execution of our children

the only thing saving them are other people’s children

joining ours down these mean streets (thirsty for their blood).

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

It has been two full weeks

in the middle of a pandemic

that disproportionately takes Black lives

yet—not tear gas, not rubber bullets

not shame tactics, not even death

has quelled this uprising of these children of the rainbow.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

This movement has spread like COVID-19 all over the planet

the spirit of resistance to tyranny and fearmongering

have infected the children marching on the US Embassy in Abuja

holding Black Lives Matter signs.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Your Maori children in New Zealand

perform a powerful Haka

for the beleaguered Black lives of your children in the USA

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Your children in France are marching for your children in America

they are marching in Germany, in South Korea and Japan

in Thailand, under strict social distancing lockdown, Zoom soldiers march

across computer screens, their virtual battle cry: Black. Lives. Matter.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Your children are demanding police defunding in Minneapolis and New York

cue for Fox News and Candace Owens bleating the end of civilization

erasing the precedent set in New Jersey in 2012:

a corrupt police department supplanted by true Public Safety Officers

protecting, serving and reducing crime to half in Camden.

Don’t label it anarchy; just say it is not politically expedient.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Your children demanding wealth redistribution, reeducation, rehabilitation

urban development                   I want to add consumer deprogramming.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

In America your children are demanding the removal of confederate statues

someone painted over the mural of racist Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo

in Philly.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Your children are marching in England

they have tossed the statue of slave trader

Edward Colston into the Bristol Harbour.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Someone pleading

Someone crying

Someone not breathing.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

I see Nat Turner, Sam Sharpe and Dessalines

sharpening their tools for battle, waiting

in the wings for someone to call them.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Take your knees off our necks

we don’t know how to stop our mothers’ rage

or our fathers’ battle cries.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

(repeat until the clock runs out at 8 minutes and 46 seconds)