I Am...By Jack Miller

                                             I Am... By Jack Miller

Rugged and old , tough soul I am
streaming up the Mississippi and the
Niger that bends and curves, 
where Planters never defend 
            this soul...
nor any amends from their human
            flaws. 

I am Savannah, I produced rice, indigo,
tobacco and king cotton...
4 my traffic Czar at the Southeast coast,
        of dirt, filth and rotten.
Afflicted with acts of sin and evil,
harvesting rice and cotton crops as blood spills.

I Am...
Rugged and cold, bitter soul I am
my ancestors tolled soil under
Hacienda's burning son to grow,
Brazil's sweet savory sugar for exporting 
of capital gains across the Pond!
I am Favela-Guarani indigenous... 

Rugged and bold, uprising soul I am
Dread Ras Scott I (eye) of the
fighting Maroons... living up and off
land in Caribbean hills, resisting
left whip and broken chains amid
        whirlwind typhoons.
Alongside Tainos with Africans that
cultivated Maroon communities,
while battling many freedom wars,
            against British settlers...

I Am
Rugged and gold, shining soul I am,
King Mansa Musa Ruler of the
Mali Empire, controlling trade networks
of wealth in salt, bondage and gold...
Trafficking across the Trans-Saharan with
a thousand servants and slaves by the 
            way of sand-storms...
Mandinka our neighbor changed our fate,
altering our rule at kingdom's gate.

I Am
Rugged with cross on the labor line,
I speak to Memphis workers striking a 
            blow and toll for
humane work-place conditions and 
            higher wages and benefits.
Atop Mount Kilimanjaro peaks, I
never sleep while Memphis J. Crow
is full of stages, villains and creeps
        I am...that I am,
our many righteous souls... I am. 

Mjack 10/2023...
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hegemony of the Western Knowledge System... By Kelson Maynard

  It is a characteristic feature of the western knowledge production system to be hegemonic.   The knowledge system becomes so normalized that even the oppressed internalizes the knowledge as normal.   They become unconscious of the fact that knowledge is a construction.   A system of   representation influenced by a multitude of forces, all intending to perpetuate white supremacy.   Examples abound: the western knowledge system represented Africa as the dark continent- meaning that the people were ignorant, wild, primitive, unsophisticated, heathenistic.   Geographically, Africa is represented much smaller than it is.   Today, these representations still form the a priori assumptions that predicate knowledge and thinking about Africa, Africans, and their descendants.   This construction of African subjectivity as ignorant, abject, despised, is crucial to the construction of European and European descendants’ subjectivity as superiors. ...
Read more

The Promise of BRICS By Kelson Maynard

The 21 st century so far is being characterized by imperial wars, denials of people’s sovereignty through occupations by military might, mass displacement of peoples, labor diasporas, the criminalization of refugees and migrants, and imminent environmental catastrophe.   These are all consequences of global capitalism.   Global capitalism’s hegemony made possible through western European and Euro-American militarism.   This system is legitimized through its knowledge system, international laws, and its ideology based on the sanctity of property.   This ideology legitimizes extreme violence against non-European peoples. To mask their nefarious designs and behavior around the world, Europeans and Euro-American imperialism established a discourse of human rights, which justifies their interventions in the sovereign domains of non-European governments and economies.   Their behaviors reaffirm the global status quo of existing global inequalities. In the 20 th ...
Read more