(no subject)
Recently, an article was written in Entertainment Weekly about Gil Scott Heron, the man credited for inventing rap and is often called the godfather of hip hop. He was an MFA student of poetry in the 1970s who started speaking his poetry over bongos and drums. He was a black man who wrote about black culture, and spoke in outrage about the Kent State shooting, the tragedies in Mississippi and other injustices done to black men and women of the time.
I've avoided politics for a long, long time. The effort has not been easy. I learned in debate class my senior year of high school that any argument can be refuted with an equally logical argument. Abortion should be illegal because abortion is murder. That's one argument. At the same time, what about the raped and the women who are pregnant out of incest? What about the women who will take coat hangers and use them to give themselves non-clinical abortions in back alleys? At the same time, have you ever seen a photo of an aborted fetus? It is...too human-like for my own comfort. On and on it goes, the debate of anything is endless, and there are great arguments on all sides of any debate.
My avoidance of politics came to an end yesterday when I heard/read Gil Scott Heron's "Enough." Here is the poem:
It was not enough that we were bought and brought to this home of the slave,
locked in the bowels of a floating shithouse,
watching those we love eaten away by plague and insanity,
flesh falling like strips of bark from a termite-infested tree,
bones rotting; turning first to brittle ivory, then to resin.
That was not enough.
It was not enough that we were chained by leg irons,
black on black with a piss stained wall.
Forced to heed nature's call through
and inside of tattered rags that strained our privates,
and evidently years of slavery did not appease your need to be superior to something
like a crazed lion hung up on being the king of his corner of the cage,
backs bent under the weight of being everything and having nothing,
minds too like bomerrangs curving back into themselves
kicked and carved by the face-straining smiles that saved my life.
That was not enough.
Somehow I can not believe that it would be enough
for me to melt with you and integrate without the thoughts of rape and murder.
I cannot conceive of peace on earth until I have given you
a piece of lead or pipe to end your worthless motherfucking existence.
Imagine your nightmares of my sneaking into a vieled of satin bedroom
and attacking your daughter, wife and mother at once
ripping open their bowels sexually like a wishbone.
Imagine that magnified a million times
when you realize that the blinders have been stripped from my eyes
and I realize that slavery was no smiling happy-fizzy party.
Your ancestors raped my foremothers and I will not forget.
I will not forget that Yale or Harvard or Princeton
or In-Hell because you are on my mind.
I see you every time my woman walks down the street with her ass on her shoulders.
I see you every time I look in the mirror
and think about the times that I would pat myself on the back
for not being too black after all.
I think of you morning, noon and night and i wonder,
"Just exactly what in hell is enough?"
Every time I see a rope or gun I remember,
and to top it all of you ain't through yet.
Over fifty you have killed in Mississippi since 1963.
That doesn't even begin to begin all of those you have maimed,
hit and run over, blinded, poisoned, starved, or castrated.
I hope you do not think that a vote for John Kennedy
took you off my shit-list because in the street there will only be black and white.
There will be no Democrats, Republicans, Liberals,
Conservatives, Moderates, or any other of the rest of that shit you have used
to make me forget to hate.
There ain't no enough. There ain't no surrender.
There is only plot and plan, move and groove,
kill. There is no promise land. There is only the promise.
The promise is not vowel until we have been nerve gassed,
shot down and murdered, or done some of the same shit ourselves.
Look over your shoulder motherfucker, I am coming.
Gil Scott Heron is raging against white people just like myself. Blonde, blue-eyed, content, white folk of the middle class who go to college and spend their time living in supreme ignorance of the issues he is screaming out about.
Yet, I appreciate his dedication. The integration he claims will never happen HAS happened. Obama is in the White House, and for all intensive purposes, race issues are more or less behind us. Tragedies like the shit in Mississippi could never happen today. I wonder what Gil Scott Heron thinks of the current climate, whether the modern day situation pleases him.
Despite it all, I respect the man for his poetry, his mind and the issues he rights about. I wonder where the political outrage is today. I think I've been searching for a battle to make my own. Gil Scott Heron found his. Where is mine?
I didn't know before I listened to him that I wanted a battle. But I do. I really, truly do. Not race-based like Gil Scott Heron, but politically based. Where are the protests for equality like in the old days? Where are the people writing, playing music and bleeding for the issues they care about?
I will find a battle, and I will struggle to win it. Gil Scott Heron has inspired a white boy from the suburbs to stop being so goddamn content. I thank him for it.
I've avoided politics for a long, long time. The effort has not been easy. I learned in debate class my senior year of high school that any argument can be refuted with an equally logical argument. Abortion should be illegal because abortion is murder. That's one argument. At the same time, what about the raped and the women who are pregnant out of incest? What about the women who will take coat hangers and use them to give themselves non-clinical abortions in back alleys? At the same time, have you ever seen a photo of an aborted fetus? It is...too human-like for my own comfort. On and on it goes, the debate of anything is endless, and there are great arguments on all sides of any debate.
My avoidance of politics came to an end yesterday when I heard/read Gil Scott Heron's "Enough." Here is the poem:
It was not enough that we were bought and brought to this home of the slave,
locked in the bowels of a floating shithouse,
watching those we love eaten away by plague and insanity,
flesh falling like strips of bark from a termite-infested tree,
bones rotting; turning first to brittle ivory, then to resin.
That was not enough.
It was not enough that we were chained by leg irons,
black on black with a piss stained wall.
Forced to heed nature's call through
and inside of tattered rags that strained our privates,
and evidently years of slavery did not appease your need to be superior to something
like a crazed lion hung up on being the king of his corner of the cage,
backs bent under the weight of being everything and having nothing,
minds too like bomerrangs curving back into themselves
kicked and carved by the face-straining smiles that saved my life.
That was not enough.
Somehow I can not believe that it would be enough
for me to melt with you and integrate without the thoughts of rape and murder.
I cannot conceive of peace on earth until I have given you
a piece of lead or pipe to end your worthless motherfucking existence.
Imagine your nightmares of my sneaking into a vieled of satin bedroom
and attacking your daughter, wife and mother at once
ripping open their bowels sexually like a wishbone.
Imagine that magnified a million times
when you realize that the blinders have been stripped from my eyes
and I realize that slavery was no smiling happy-fizzy party.
Your ancestors raped my foremothers and I will not forget.
I will not forget that Yale or Harvard or Princeton
or In-Hell because you are on my mind.
I see you every time my woman walks down the street with her ass on her shoulders.
I see you every time I look in the mirror
and think about the times that I would pat myself on the back
for not being too black after all.
I think of you morning, noon and night and i wonder,
"Just exactly what in hell is enough?"
Every time I see a rope or gun I remember,
and to top it all of you ain't through yet.
Over fifty you have killed in Mississippi since 1963.
That doesn't even begin to begin all of those you have maimed,
hit and run over, blinded, poisoned, starved, or castrated.
I hope you do not think that a vote for John Kennedy
took you off my shit-list because in the street there will only be black and white.
There will be no Democrats, Republicans, Liberals,
Conservatives, Moderates, or any other of the rest of that shit you have used
to make me forget to hate.
There ain't no enough. There ain't no surrender.
There is only plot and plan, move and groove,
kill. There is no promise land. There is only the promise.
The promise is not vowel until we have been nerve gassed,
shot down and murdered, or done some of the same shit ourselves.
Look over your shoulder motherfucker, I am coming.
Gil Scott Heron is raging against white people just like myself. Blonde, blue-eyed, content, white folk of the middle class who go to college and spend their time living in supreme ignorance of the issues he is screaming out about.
Yet, I appreciate his dedication. The integration he claims will never happen HAS happened. Obama is in the White House, and for all intensive purposes, race issues are more or less behind us. Tragedies like the shit in Mississippi could never happen today. I wonder what Gil Scott Heron thinks of the current climate, whether the modern day situation pleases him.
Despite it all, I respect the man for his poetry, his mind and the issues he rights about. I wonder where the political outrage is today. I think I've been searching for a battle to make my own. Gil Scott Heron found his. Where is mine?
I didn't know before I listened to him that I wanted a battle. But I do. I really, truly do. Not race-based like Gil Scott Heron, but politically based. Where are the protests for equality like in the old days? Where are the people writing, playing music and bleeding for the issues they care about?
I will find a battle, and I will struggle to win it. Gil Scott Heron has inspired a white boy from the suburbs to stop being so goddamn content. I thank him for it.