As soon as dreams of peace are felt
the war is raging somewhere else.
Space was the rage
so Hollyweird took center stage
and together we wondered whether
we would ever get over the weather.
Things started happening that seemed so strange,
like the whole jet stream is being rearranged:
There was a clear day in L.A.,
a foot of snow in Tampa Bay.
The space shuttle no sooner goes up
than we watch while the weather man goes nuts.
Tornados and hurricanes,
dead rivers and Acid Rain,
volcanoes ages dead
suddenly just get up and lose their heads.
Typhoons, monsoons,
and tidal waves come down from an angry moon.
It’s earthquaking all the Goddamn time
and the only common denominator we can find …
Space Shuttle/raising hell down on the ground!
Space Shuttle/turning the seasons upside down.
Space Shuttle/and all the hungry people know
all change sho’ ’nuff ain’t progress when you’re poor.
No matter what man goes looking for
he always seems to find a war.
As soon as dreams of peace are felt
the war is raging somewhere else.
Old folks must have had it right
from the time they saw the first satellite
they said ‘Some advancements may be good,
but not in God’s neighborhood.’
Laser beams and moonbeams,
we got peace dreams killed by war schemes,
there’s a hole shot through the ozone layer
that has put the fear back into atmos-fear.
ICBM, MX, Cruise Missiles,
obsolete today.
Let’s spend another billion on The Sergeant York
and then throw that ‘sumbitch’ away.
War is big business without a doubt
so there ain’t much chance of peace breaking out.
Underwater, overhead, God we’ll all be nervous wrecks
’cause did you hear where they’re going next?
Space Shuttle/raising hell down on the ground!
Space Shuttle/turning the seasons upside down.
Space shuttle/and all the hungry people know
all change sho’ ’nuff ain’t progress when you’re poor.
No matter what man goes looking for
he always seems to find a war.
As soon as dreams of peace are felt
the war is raging somewhere else.
WHITEY ON THE MOON
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey’s on the moon)
I can’t pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still.
(while Whitey’s on the moon)
The man jus’ upped my rent las’ night.
(’cause Whitey’s on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
I wonder why he uppin’ me?
(’cause Whitey’s on the moon?)
I wuz already payin’ ’im fifty a week.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Taxes takin’ my whole damn check,
Junkies make me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin’ up,
An’ as if all that crap wuzn’t enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face an’ arm began to swell.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
Was all that money I made las’ year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain’t no money here?
(Hmm! Whitey’s on the moon)
Y’know I jus’ ’bout had my fill
(of Whitey on the moon.)
I think I’ll sen’ these doctor bills
(to Whitey on the moon.)
BLACK HISTORY
I was wondering about our yesterdays
and started digging through the rubble
and to tell the truth somebody went
to a hell of a lot of trouble
to make sure that when we looked things up
we wouldn’t fare too well
and that we would come up with totally unreliable
pictures of ourselves.
But I’ve compiled what few facts I could,
I mean, such as they are
to see if I could shed a little bit of light
and this is what I got so far:
First, white folks discovered Africa
and claimed it fair and square.
Cecil Rhodes couldn’t have been robbing nobody
’cause he said there was nobody there.
White folks brought all of the civilization
since there wasn’t none around.
They said ‘How could these folks be civilized
when you never see nobody writing nothing down?’
And to prove all of their suspicions
it didn’t take too long.
They found out there were whole groups of people
– in plain sight –
running around with no clothes on. That’s right!
The women, the men, the young and the old,
righteous white folks covered their eyes.
So no time was spent considering the environment.
Hell no! This here, this just wasn’t civilized.
And another way they knew we were backwards,
or at least this is how we were taught,
is that ‘Unlike the very civilized people of Europe’
these Black groups actually fought!
And yes, they were some ‘rather crude implements’
and yes, there was ‘primitive art’
and yes, they were masters of hunting and fishing
and courtesy came from the heart.
And yes, there was medicine, love and religion,
inter-tribal communication by drum.
But no papers and pencils and other utensils
and hell, these folks never even heard of a gun.
So this is why the colonies came
to stabilize the land.
Because The Dark Continent had copper and gold
and the discoverers had themselves a plan.
They would ‘discover’ all the places with promise.
You didn’t need no titles or deeds.
You could just appoint people to make everything legal,
to sanction the trickery and greed.
And out in the bushes if the natives got restless
You could call that ‘guerilla attack!’
And never have to describe that somebody finally got wise
and decided they wanted their things back.
But still we are victims of word games,
semantics is always a bitch:
Places once called underdeveloped and ‘backwards’
are now called ‘mineral rich’.
And still it seems the game goes on
with unity always just out of reach
because Libya and Egypt used to be in Africa,
but they’ve been moved to the ‘Middle East’.
There are examples galore I assure you,
but if interpreting was left up to me
I’d be sure every time folks knew this version wasn’t mine
which is why it is called ‘His story’.
DR. KING (from The Last Holiday)
The Artist had honestly never given much thought
As to how much of a battle would have to be fought
To get most Americans to agree and to say
That there actually should be a black h
oliday.
But what a hell of a challenge. How far was Stevie willing to go
To make them pass an amendment left on the table 10 years in a row?
The Artist never doubted that Stevie was sincere
But how many minds had come together in the last 12 years?
How many folks recognised how much America had to grow?
And who else had been qualified to lead us where we had to go?
The Artist had liked the idea of a minister being around
When racing for high stakes, to have his foot near the brakes
Because of what truly could have gone down.
Because America could have blown up
Before it ever could be said that we had grown up.
Ghandi took non-violence with him when he died
Over here there was non-violence but only on one side.
When white folks beat up on and killed people that you knew
You decided to direct your anger at a building or two.
Instead of making the Old Testament a Civil Rights guide
And saying that ‘an eye for an eye’ would now be justified
We were told to accept that some white folks had no class
And as opposed to condemning all the white folks ‘en masse’.
We determined that remaining peaceful was the best thing.
And directing those feeling were men like Dr. King.
Through a storm of provocation to fight we saw
That in order to change America you must change the law.
We were called ‘militant’ and ‘radical’ and made to look bad
For trying to secure the rights all Americans had.
But between what’s written and what’s done is the real thing
So America might not have made it without Dr. Martin Luther King.
A TOAST TO THE PEOPLE
And though its been too long and
Too many years have passed
And though the time has gone,
The memories still hold fast.
Yes, as strange as it seems
We still live in the past.
The essence of a Black life
Lost in the hour-glass.
And ever since we came to this land
This country has rued the day
When we would stand as one
And raise our voices and say:
You know there won’t be no more killings
And no more talk of class;
Your sons and your daughters
Won’t die in the hour-glass.
A toast to David Walker
A toast to Martin King
A toast to all the leaders who had a golden dream.
A toast to all Black fathers who lived their lives in vain.
A toast to all Black mothers who shouldered this life in pain.
A toast to the people.
THE WORLD
The world!
Planet Earth; third from the Sun of a gun, 360 degrees.
And as new worlds emerge
stay alert. Stay aware.
Watch the Eagle! Watch the Bear!
Earthquaking, foundation shaking,
bias breaking, new day making change.
Accumulating, liberating, educating, stimulating change!
Tomorrow was born yesterday.
From inside the rib or people cage
the era of our first blood stage was blotted or erased
or TV screened or defaced.
Remember there’s a revolution going on in the world.
One blood of the early morning
revolves to the one idea of our tomorrow.
Homeboy, hold on!
Now more than ever all the family must come together.
Ideas of freedom and harmony, great civilizations
yesterday brought today will bring tomorrow.
We must be about
earthquaking, liberating, investigating
and new day making change in
the world.
WORK FOR PEACE1
Introduction:
Back when Eisenhower was the President
Golf courses was where most of his time was spent.
So I never paid much attention to what the President said
Because in general, I believed the General was politically dead,
But he always seemed to know how muscles were going to be flexed
He kept mumbling something about a military-industrial complex.
The military and monetary
The military and monetary
The military and monetary
The military and the monetary
Get together whenever they think its necessary
They have turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries,
They are turning the planet into a cemetery.
The military and the monetary
Use the media as intermediaries.
They are determined to keep the citizens secondary
They make so many decisions that seem arbitrary.
We’ve been standing behind the ‘Commander-in-Chief’
Who was under a spotlight, shaking like a leaf
Because the ship of state had landed on an economic reef
So we knew he’d be bringing us messages of grief.
The military and monetary
Were ‘Shielded’2 by January and went ‘Storming’3 into February.
They brought us pot-bellied Generals as luminaries.
Two weeks before I hadn’t heard of the sons of Bitches
And then all of a sudden they were legendary.
They took the honor from the honorary
They took the dignity from the dignitaries
They took the secrets from the secretaries
But they left the ‘bitch’ in ‘obituary’
Yeah, they had some ‘smart bombs’
But they had some dumb ones as well
They scared the hell outta CNN in that Baghdad hotel.
The military and the monetary
The military and monetary
The military and monetary
Get together whenever they think its necessary
War in the desert sometimes sure could seem scary
But they beamed out the war to all of their subsidiaries
Tried making ‘so damn insane’ (Saddam Hussein) a worthy adversary
Keeping all of the citizens secondary
Scaring old folks into coronaries
Making us all wonder if all of this was really, truly necessary.
We’ve got to work for peace.
We’ve got to work for peace.
If we all believed in peace we could have peace.
The only thing wrong with peace is that
You can’t make no money from it.
The military and the monetary
Get together whenever they think it’s necessary
They have turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries
We are turning parts of the planet into a cemetery.
We hounded the Ayatollah religiously,
Bombed Libya and killed Qadafi’s son hideously.
We turned our back on our allies, the Panamanians
Watched Ollie North selling guns to the Iranians
Witnessed Gorbachev slaughtering Lithuanians
So we better warn the Amish, they may bomb the Pennsylvanians.
We’ve got to work for peace.
Peace ain’t coming this way.
We’ve got to work for peace.
Peace is not (merely) the absence of war
It is the absence of the rumors of war and the threats of war
And the preparation for war.
Peace is not (merely) the absence of war
We will have all touched the power of peace within ourselves.
Because we will have all come to peace within ourselves.
Peace ain’t gonna be easy.
Peace ain’t gonna be free.
> We’ve got to work for peace.
(SPIRITS 1994 TVT RECORDS)
FOOTNOTES:
1. The poem is also known as ‘The Military and the Monetary’ and also ‘So Damn Insane’
2. The ‘Gulf War’ January phase was coded ‘Desert Shield’
3. The ‘Gulf War’ February phase was coded ‘Desert Storm’
WHAT YOU SEE AIN'T WHAT YOU GOETZ
I get the sho’ ’nuff blues
checkin’ out the Daily News
no matter which way it’s comin’ from
I’m told I’m not supposed to choose
just accept the newsman’s views
but that sho’ ain’t no happy medium
You see all I want is the facts
but blow-dried hairdos is gettin’ into the act
because reporters are expert observers
they establish social trends
decidin’ who’s out and who’s in
and rush in with the tragedies that unnerve us
Syndicated columnists
lookin’ to get their asses kissed
cause they’re the big shots of political affairs
and the anchorman’s job
is to look extra suave
while they’re trying to convince us that they care
The radio commentator
is a five minute narrator
whose news is perpetually grim
and his ego is blown
he’s got a great baritone
but the cameras ain’t never on him
But the message is clear
they want all Black folks to hear
that the price you got to pay to be free
you get told how to feel
you get told what is real
to be exactly how they want you to be
you get the rational logical
sound philosophical
poetic distortions
political contortions
cause white folks still ain’t ready yet
so what you hear ain’t gonna be what you get
Now and Then Page 3
