Ancient History My...

DELAYED REACTION

Is it ancient history to you?
I’m not ancient
And I just turned 52.
It was just *yesterday when all my troubles seemed so far away*
But not really-troubles were all around me.
When minimum wage was $1.35
And gasoline was only pennies for a ride
And Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was still alive.
Is it ancient history to you?
I just got here
And I just turned 52.
My generation took for granted
A legacy
But I didn’t
And I’m not yet 53.
Not me
Denigrating
Hating
Castigating
And all sucked up in the chest
Because they choose better over best.
Like some certain lost Hebrews in the Desert of Sin
Looking back to Egypt when the
Promised Land was just ahead
Two things an old(er) bitch can’t stand
Racist Krakkas and Trifling Niggaz, too.
I’m just in time and I just turned
Five-Two.
Let me take you on a ride through my mind
It’s perfect
Because I’m one of a kind.
Picture me
A little black girl sitting on the back of a bus
With the rest of us.
I can’t complain, see…it was MY shame.
Riots broke out
The world seemed like a zoo
I’m a neophyte to God
And I just turned 52.
Is it ancient history, really?
I’m ashamed and yet proud of my history
I grew up with the best people
And the lay of the land was about to change
Yet when it was time for the watch
To change hands
We … shall I say, they
Dropped the ball on the Movement
Threw the baby out with the bath water, they did
My peeps took a lot for granted
That we were free
But not me.
Not really.
It was a newborn baby
That still had to be raised; but
Like America does…
It has a word for nursing home
Because it throws away it’s old people
It has a word for orphanage
Because it ditches its unwanted and unloved to the curb
And goes to the Humane Society to take in a dog in
The child’s place
The child still needed to raise up a standard against the burgeoning tide
Rather than being taken on a ride.
Instead of charging the hatred, lingering still
We just went smoooooooth…out….and…..let it ride.
*I just wanna thank you for lettin’ me be myself.*
Again. Everybody get high.
Learn to defy the status quo
Even if it means beating up on your mothers and fathers, too.
Colored/White signs swayed in a moonlitten breeze
Pointing us to the back of the train station
Where colored cabs were waiting
To escort black in the red not the yellow
Couldn’t walk in a front door
While black folks was hatin’ on themselves
And each other, too.
Grew up in a black school with red brick veneer
We couldn’t even walk to the white side of the street
Let alone drive up there.
And even after federal-mandated Integration
There was no celebration
On either side of the street
Because they didn’t want it
And neither did we.
I’m looking down the road
Where I get to meet 53.
This is the first time there’s been a sitting President
In the Oval Office who is younger than me.
Does that seem like ancient history to you?
I was nine when King was killed
And not yet 10 when Kennedy was killed, too.
And I just turned 52.
There is still a lot of hard work to do
Because I don’t want to hear this shit
Is still going on
When I turn 102.