Resistance

The smiles, pretense, while
They find a reason to look

Not through a kaleidoscope.
How a King had a dream, that played

Out on a chessboard. How the earliest one,
Kunta Kinte, belonged to the Mandinka tribe.

Black men, afro or cornrows, tall or short
They are all brothers, whose legs were

Once branded like cattle, chained like a dog,
And still they stood in a legion of heroes,

From Amistad, to Lebron James,
They were rebels of a status quo.

The back of a bus, is no place for dreams,
Only a dunk through a hoop,

How they are only plagued by strength
And gift, the notoriety of darkness

And the glory of brute grit, how
Through the chessboards and checkers,

They move, like mustangs towards
A dream, that could not be toppled,

On a day in 1968. Memphis
Was not the end, it was the beginning,

Like Memphis, Egypt, where
The first nome was. How one man’s voice

Was not just stentorian, it preached
And laid the framework for a dream,

That awakens at dawn and sleeps
At night, and in between,

The darkness in America, becomes only
The tip of an iceberg. How little

We know of the ghetto, and the few
Who climb out of it.

Lebron should have been a gangster,
But he is now, the black messiah

On a court, while on courts, hurricanes
Blew. Hurricane Carters, of a legal system

Falsely accused, diabolically imprisoned.
How the black man, surrounded by eyes,

Is too, a breeding ground, for hate.
How the dream, opens eyes, as

Young as 10, ghettoes fill with young
Black men, who become heroes,

The dream hoisted like one mammoth kite,
With millions of strings, each a kite runner

Of color. The dream of a King,
Who showed his people, the color of a dream,

The place in the sky, and how to become
At ease, with the white man’s eyes,

Ebony becomes a stage, upon birth,
Just like how Shakespeare looked at Othello,

A stage with a white background, a wall;
How making it, is all about, being

At ease with the contrast. The dream
Is not to better your birth and your genes,

Only to let the unconscious take over,
Like the Zen of a basketball court,

Its always the time, to transcend the dark ages.
There are no vaccinations to kill hate

Only good men trading their lives, in the name of love,
Like the charge of light brigade,

Men and women who once dragged their bodies,
To the front of a bus, now are dragging

Their bodies through law schools, board meetings,
Donning white coats. The law of the land,

Has no place for Jim Crow, only
Bands of brothers, powering their pens,

How we muscled wall after wall, with sledgehammers,
Two centuries of breaking-down barriers,

Now, we walk down Wall Street,
In 1000$ Gucci suits.