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African Dancer
For Langston Hughes

Dance my dancer of Africa
through the great fields of Africa.
Pounce upon the drums of your tribe,
by yellow shades of morning before me.
Dance with untamed spirit,
beneath the silver face of the moon,
beneath infinite blue skies.
Stomp your feet my queen of Africa
into the fat face of genocide.
Break the bones of apartheid.
Break bread above the mouths
of children.
Visions of basketballs dance in their head.
Visions of signing record contracts.
Visions of hootchee mama in tight video skirt, weave down to here.
Dance my queen,
let your blackness run down
white house steps.
Blood of the dead trickles
down designer neckties
of blue eyed fascists.
Dance for shot down
Black boys
cradled in the arms of mothers.
Dance for Emmett Till dead at 4teen.
Dance on shrouded faces of skinhead rally.
Cut their throats with swastikas
Hatred splash like acid on impressionable
Teenagers.
Guns, grenades in locker
behind American History textbook.
Dance for Latasha Harlin gunned down in her orange Reeboks
in Korean convenience store
By white assimilation
Affirm your actions with swift kicks in imperial stomach
Dance against a million lashes across black back
House niggers stroking strands of blond hair
wash 400 hundred years of
piss & shit out of white folkses underwear for ham hocks and pig feet.
First black actress wins Academy Award for playing Aunt Jemima.
Dance for Butterfly McQueen who don't know
nothin' bout birthin' no babies
Dance for Malcolm
Dance for Martin
Dance for Betty Shabazz 3rd degree of inner city change
Three degrees of burn
Set by hands of grandson
Trade handguns for NWA tickets
Secure suburbia home with NRA bumper stickers
Come on I'll show you where my dad keeps his gun
Bean pie brother for a dollar of your time
To build our temple by community money
Black men with naked pockets, lint where money used to be
Stand on street corner discover the beauty of Jack Daniel's
HELP ME I'M DYING BY BLACK ON BLACK CRIME
I'M BECOMING EXTINCT.
MY SOUL is LOST.
Dance sista for dead black queers unknown to the world
Dance for Essex
Dance for Assoto Saint
Dance for the fierce drag queens
whose fathers don't understand.
Dance for Melvin Dixon.
Dance for Joseph Beam.
Dance for Joe Joe who died of ridicule & lost acts of love.
Dance for my black ass daddy who is a good man,
but won't do the right thing,
who can't stay out of jail,
Who lies, steals & cheats.
Dance for my mama worried, crying, defenseless
in her turquoise night gown,
bags beneath her brown eyes.
Dance for teenage pregnant sista's
Thrown out by loving parents.
Dance for queer sons who have no explanation
For Playgirl discovered under mattress.
Dance African Dancer against child abuse.
Dance across houses of refuge for battered wives who have had enough.
Mother of two bludgeons husband with iron.
Dance for political prisoners.
Dance against nightsticks stuck up ass of innocent bystander,
for the freedom to write poetry about it all.
Dance for Billie Holiday,
Dorothy Dandridge,
Louis Armstrong,
Bessie Smith,
Josephine Baker
who walked in from the back door
so we could walk in from the front.
Dance for Langston Hughes,
Ralph Ellison's: Invisible Man
Richard Wright's: Native Son
Dance against the burning crosses
put out by the water hoses
of Black America.
Dance for the black fists of America.
Afros glisten in the sun of Egypt.
Eyes witness to a mama who holds her bloody son.
Dance against tightropes, around a brotha's neck
Burn down the oak trees where bodies hung like earrings.
Dance for unity in the community.
Come to the front of the bus Rosa.
Hold the light that sparked Civil Rights.
Come on Medgar Evers.
Come on Nat Turner.
Come on Sojurner Truth.
Come on Harriet Tubman.
Come on Marcus Garvey.
Get up here Dr. Martin Luther King.
Get up here Malcolm.
Get up here Emmett Till.
Get up here Paul Robeson.
Get up here Harriet Wilson.
Get up here William Wells Brown, Frances Harper, Ida B. Wells.
Get up here Langston Hughes.
Get up here Fannie May Harper.
Move over white folks with your ropes & plantations
& blood white hoods & politics.
Turn off your hoses; call off your dogs & police brutality of Alabama I'm 
not asking, I'm telling you.
I'm taking the keys to your shackles.
I'm reserving the seat to the lunch counter of this country.
American apple pie from white only restaurants.
Muthafuck the American Dream
The American Dream comes in slices
But I don't want a slice. I want the whole damn pie
& a tall, cold glass of milk to wash it all down with.
Betta check for razor blades, pipe bombs in that pie.
Reflections of picket signs in the milk that says,
Niggers Go Home
Niggers Go Back to Africa
Fuck you Richard Nixon!
Fuck you Bill Clinton!
Fuck you Andrew Jackson!
Dance for Mumia.
Dance for Indonesia Mama working
in sweat shops for Wal-Mart 2 dollars a day
because for every low down price, a China woman's throat is cut. Her 
children go hungry.
Fingers worked to blisters for rich brats. Silver spoons stuck in trust fund 
pussy.

Go to hell Michael Jordan,
peddle your Air Jordan's
some place else BROTHA!
Kiss my black pro-life ass Joan Rivers you have nothing to offer the world.
Go fuck yourself Anita Bryant, General Motors who
lay off factory workers after 20 years.
daughters of broken homes,
sons of empty stomach,
bare ass,
torn jeans,
crying eyes.
Fuck you John Hanvey cancer eats away at your blackened lungs
piss plasma in toilet of Chicago hotel 22 hrs away
Go to hell cold blooded walking hate crime
7teen year old hates gays.
Homo Christian sin.
Get your religion out of my bedroom.
Take the self-righteousness with you.
You can have your God Hates Fags signs.
Dance against the rape of Native Americans
on bed of reservations,
against black woman on bed of plantations
founded on bones of ancestors.
Move over with your eyes as blue as the sea that drowned
Kings & queens & children of kings & queens
Move over white folks
MOVE THE FUCK OVER!!!!!!!!!

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