Truth is a Virus
By Sundiata Acoli and Walidah Imarisha
Guerrilla plague
Brought from bastard tongues
Blood from a burst blister
Blood on the legs of a sister
We are the fever that heals as it burns
Our rage purifies
Harbingers of chaos and construction.
Living virus running through your system
Resurrecting those you hit at but missed em
We are the war coming home
The second coming of Rome
Defeated abroad and destroyed from within
Never to terrorize or rise again.
Revolutionaries birthed and homegrown
Smeared on cheeks like ash
He smiles at all his grandchildren
He knows the inside of vaccination needles
And sterilization pills
His heart bursting with so much love
And so much fear
Hoping his strong arms
Can build a shelter
Against the coming epidemic.
He smiles at his grandchildren, loving them so,
But still must send them where angels fear to go
Grossly unprepared because they haven’t been trained
Their schools long ago razed, teachers routed and cadre maimed.
Eyes so wide
You can see the future in em
And deep as a new york sewer drain
This child has my eyes
And they are too old for this polished apple face.
A pug nose
And a wide grin mouth
Eyes searching the landmarks for 95 south
Think you can make it thru
That’s easy to do…
Once, twice but how about the rest of your life?
You can not hope to understand
Infinity
But 33 years starts to stretch
Farther than forever
As the blood slows
In our collective veins
In stasis
Mosquitoes in amber
With the lifeblood
Of ancestors
Suspended inside us.
33 years and more
is just a meatball
compared to foreparents
who did cradle to grave
and still stood tall.
That same blood
Yet courses our veins
Their same message drumbeats
Over and over again.
The solutions to a problem
Lie in its origin.
Human history is long
Ours goes back
To the beginning,
Before the spread of false images
That keep the world lamenting.
So the call of the Ancients
Who had the strength of 10
Will forever remind us when
Once we were free,
And that we, and the world,
Shall be
Free again.
Sundiata Acoli is a former Black Panther/Black Liberation Army political prisoner who has been locked down for over 30 years.
Write to him at:
Sundiata Acoli
#39794-066
(Squire) PO Box 3000
USP Allenwood
White Deer, PA 17887
www.myspace.com/freesundiata