And kept it as yours.
My countenance fell
Like Jerusalem did to Babylon.
And I lamented like
The prophet, Jeremiah.
For I had none to comfort me.
“I am gone into captivity
Under affliction
And hard servitude.”
My heart finds no rest
Because “my persecutor
Overtakes me in dire straits.”
You gave my love away to other women
And yet I let you in.
But you destroyed my temple
Taking every golden treasure
I had to offer, and giving it to idols.
At one point in time I reigned
As a “princess among the provinces”
Of your heart.
But now “I have become a slave.”
My mother “sent warnings”
But I “despised her words
And scoffed” at her teachings
Like Israel did God
As you transformed from my lover
To my enemy
And annihilated the sanctuary of my soul
“Till there was no remedy.”
Quotes from Jeremiah 12
I held their hands,
But I didn’t feel the power that they felt.
He prayed ever so fervently
And everybody else agreed by saying,
“Yes.” But to what?
I watched them hold his hand,
That still man’s hand,
My granddaddy’s hand.
I watched tears pour
Down their cheeks, but
I did not cry.
Did that make me less passionate?
“Dear Father,” he said
“please let your man servant make it
Through this trying time.”
And again, they said, “Yes.”
But I didn’t. He lay awake in
The bed but I knew it hurt to do so.
He always tried to remain strong for them
But remaining strong only made him
Weaker. They prayed for God to give
Him rest. That was what he needed.
Rest.
I said, “Yes” to that unconsciously,
For I, myself, prayed for him to find rest.
And they prayed for his life also.
Why his life?
I saw their contradictions
And I resented them for their indecisiveness.
They prayed for God to save his life,
But his life does not bid him rest.
Which do they want? Can’t they see he can’t have both?
He prayed to himself fervently
Not for his life, but for relief.
They’d been praying for months but
God did not lend them his ear,
Let alone a healing hand.
But they continued to pray nonetheless
As people reached forward laying
Their hands on him as if they
Possessed a healing power that God himself
Didn’t.
“In Jesus’ name,” he said.
“In Jesus name,” they echoed.
“In Jesus’ name,” he said louder than before.
“In Jesus’ name,” they called.
They called for Him, but he didn’t answer.
As they began to depart, grandmamma stopped
And said, “Get some rest, honey.”
I ran my hand over his face to shut his eyes.
“Yes,” I said. “In Jesus’ name.”
They surround me,
leaving no room to think of the
nextstep,
let alone
breathe.
I reach out
but no one takes my hand.
I cry for help but they can’t hear me.
“Can anybody hear me?”
I yell to them,
but they stand there and
watch.
Watch as if this is the day
they had been waiting for,
my down fall.
Now I’m trapped in a glass box.
I can see them
but my cage is ever so delicately
tinted that no one can see
inside.
I bang.
I scream.
I scratch.
I yell, but they can’t hear me.
The tears don’t just fall
they pour down my face,
but none come to comfort me.
Well, at least that’s how it is in my head.
I sit here quietly watching what’s going on,
Smiling and laughing when I’m supposed to
because its lady like to suffer in silence.
They are tortured by fear,
as the knowledge of those
who believe in the
Status of majority rule
pours into the minds of
the innocent. They
object to their theories
knowing that it can’t be right.
Intimidation has their voices
chained to the walls of silence,
so they become hoarse temporarily.
Yet understanding that in order to
bring the world out of darkness
they must be the light.
But they remain captives voluntarily,
listening to the cunning words of
intelligent fools, knowing that
these chains could be broken
if only they would
speak.
We were once blind to all outsiders, strangers and foreigners
And their teachings.
It was just us.
We thought we possessed a dominating power
That couldn’t be conquered, but then they came,
the others.
They came with their books, different looks
and foreign languages and taught us about the forbidden and the unknown .
They assimilated as we conformed, and then we all transformed
into an intellectual empire. We adopted our neighbors
who we once saw as relatively close aliens, And showed them
a different nation behind these walls, and they immigrated.
We erased the word “unfamiliar”
from our vocabulary, and embraced it.
We identified them as one of us as
different shades began to disrupt the pattern,
checkering the pages of our year books.
We were once blind, in a sense,
to where we could only see ourselves,
but over the years we have only grown
blind to color as we finally let
the outsiders in.
The rhythmatic mobility
With the spitting of words
Was once an immaculate
Thought, but as the generations
Go by these treasures to society
Begin to lose their worth.
They no longer have meaning.
At a point in time flow was
A gift for the elected
But now in present times
Anything goes. They hardly
Use talent anymore,
But instead they synchronize a
Noise and call it music.
The simple bobbing has now become shaking,
Gyrating and all types of vibrating
As if they have no type of control over
Their body. There is no talent in that.
What happened to the time when
Music was made to help build humanity
But instead it fills the
Ears of the young
With all sorts of vanity
Like money, cars, and clothes.
Music is power.
So what will become of us
If we use it to devour
Those who take heed to
What is said? At a point in
Time people couldn’t live without
It but now it brings no benefit to man.
There have always been rebels to the
Way things use to be, but now they
Run the music community as the artists
From human history begin
To die out. Who will take their place?
For I have yet to see in
This day and age any one capable
Of reaching their standards. But they aren’t
Trying because we live in a time
When people settle for the worse
Even though it use to be better.
So what do we make of it?
What do we make of those few
Who have potential, but let it
sit in vain?
Music is power.
So what will become of us if
Musicians no longer shower our
Ears with words of healing?
Instead they use explicit lyrics
With reveling content,
A talent that’s so far bent
Out of shape that it’s no
Longer recognizable. Beats
Always had the strength
To create images, but now
Their beats are just pornography
Written in words.
Music is powerful
When there is something to sing
About. But cats these days
Are too content.
So they forgot how to use it.
imagine...
imagine that knowledge is power
because it takes us to different heights,
levels of achievement that not even your
1960’s rocket scientist ever dreamed of.
imagine that we could be motivated to do better
because we understand that “good enough”
is never enough to satisfy the world’s hunger for change.
“Too often we underestimate the power...
the smallest acts of caring, all of which have the potential
to turn life around.” (Leo Bucaglia)
imagine that hard work pays off in the end,
that those who labor diligently need never despair.
Good things come to those who wait,
which means there’s nothing so hard that diligence can’t master it.
imagine that honesty, a by-product of integrity,
is telling people the truth without addition or subtraction.
Integrity, a way of life,
is telling yourself the truth
no matter how bad it hurts.
imagine that it’s possible to be more than men of success.
we can be men of value,
regardless of what others may say or think about us.
Sitting and thinking about such possibilities
only shortens the time for progression.
the sky is the limit, which means
we know no limits to what could be.
Anything’s possible, you just have to
make it happen.
You’ve condemned the idle minds
that choose to conform.
And you understand that there’s
an emptiness that comes with self denial,
or rather,
self sacrifice. Yet,
you allow others to adjust and readjust your standards.
Is it because you know that you are not like them?
Are you ashamed?
Are you ashamed that there
may only be one person in the world that knows the real you?
But no,
instead of embracing the realest love that’s out there,
let’s substitute your truth for theirs.
That way everybody wins.
Are you ashamed of the differences between you all?
If so, walk like them.
Conform, and be the true leech that you are.
Suck out all the blood that you can from them
so that you can maintain your social life.
Talk like them.
Look me in the eyes and lie.
Speak words that tickle my fancy
and entertain my heart.
Preach a doctrine that you know you won’t follow
since they aren’t really looking for a leader anyways.
Be them,
since being you isn’t good enough.
See them.
Breathe them.
Live them.
But the more like them you become
the more foreign you become to me.
Or maybe that’s just it.
Maybe you aren’t ashamed of the differences.
Maybe there are none.
Maybe you’re just ashamed of me.
If actions speak louder than words,
then its not enough to just WANT to be different.
Aligning one’s cognizance to the paradigms
of society only abates the realization of
the contemporary social anarchy.
It’s like accommodating in order to revolutionize.
TRUTH: you’ll stand as a contradiction
amongst others and yourself
if you claim to live above banal standards,
and continue to walk in the ways of the pedestrian.Finally the day has come when we have to make a change.
We stand at the door that leads to
alien principals such as autonomy and self-reliance,
slowly stepping out of the realm of dependency
into the world where self-sufficiency is required in order to maintain.
But do we look back to what is familiar because we are scared of what is unknown?
No. For living in the past only pauses the present and stops the future.
One of the biggest mistakes we can make in life
is looking to the past as a source of comfort
for the hardships that lie ahead.
Don’t rest on old things
even though that’s all we know.
We are merely human, and subject to imperfection,
but errors lead to discoveries,
and mistakes make experiences.
So stumbling isn’t the sin,
it’s refusing to get back up after you’ve fallen,
and justifying your faults,
that makes you a failure.
It has been said that
“we are scribes of our own stories,”
so let’s not dwell on what was,
but rather, what will be.
Adam lives in theory
Taking his man made doctrine
and using it to help
uplift his pride to a distant
hierarchy,
creating his own wisdom
and implanting it into the
minds of the eager.
He’s so far gone in a daze
that he begins to
rely only in his self-proclamations
and turns a deaf ear to understanding.
Ranking high in his own social status,
he takes independence to a
whole new dimension
because he’s self-portrayed
and self-proclaimed,
saying to himself, “I AM.”
Since errors are a sinners daily duty
Adam takes his gospel,
a doctrine of dark illusion,
and baptizes with past confusions.
Because he has more degrees than
a thermometer it shows he is
the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE.
No one comes unto knowledge except through him.
Adam lives in theory
trying to turn stone into bread,
feeding the hearts of the curious
with his unleavened loaves.
Yet they still hunger.
So he shares his knowledge
and they adhere and believe
that because knowledge is infinite,
it has infinitely fell on him.
But Adam no longer is the only one
to plant deceptive seeds.
For indeed, Eve too
ate the fruit of the tree.
Inspired by Lauryn Hill, Unplugged album
