Them That Know Don’t Say

By Professor Rayfield Waller

If ‘history is a gift’

You won’t know it from me

I’ve grown fat and old, I know how to stop being fat,

That’s easy, takes only more time,

But there is only one cure for being old.

And even if some geek scientist somewhere

Finally invent a genetic prod to goose our genes

And makes us eternally young,

Who will ever take from me the sight

Of a woman’s torso aflame on a South Afrikan road,

Or the dead man with no head I saw in Mozambique,

To haunt me and make me old no matter what?

See if I could whip history’s ass

I’d do my diet, my weight lifting, my cardio for a year, get ready,

I’d call that joker out some cold winter morning,

Man to man in the snow:

(I’ve fought your ass before)

“let’s have I out once and for all, you bastard,”

I’d tell him, and before he’d lay me out in a suit

Embalmed and tied round the neck

With my Hughes and Hatcher knot,

I’d try my best

To let him know at least

He was in a fight

(I’ve fought your ass before)

In other words I feel it. I’m old.

Beautiful women like you only make it worse.

Yours is a beauty the young folks don’t know

How to recognize,

So full of “Bouncy” Beonce, that whore

Of Babylon, wearing diamond bars and

Leather thongs, with about ten seconds worth of

Mind inside that vapid face of hers,

That they don’t know

How to appreciate you

You are like my mother and my aunts,

Sly, slow, and willy in your wits

Sexy because sultry, sultry because elegant

Of style and thought; capable of making a fist,

Like the ones we used to make in a time when a yellow woman

Would kick your ass faster than the blackberry woman would

And could swing those hips or toss that Molotov Cocktail

Quick as any other sister, Alabaman or Puerto Rican

To make Andre Molotov smile,

Castro chuckle, and Che Guevara rile

Up the ruling class, Patrice Lamumba dance a rumba.

Angela Davis, yellow as you, meant to send her enemies to hell

With a well-place pistol shot

(How is that shit, for’ can we all just get along?

Can we all just jump the masters back and bash his head in? How about that for race relations?)

Beautiful women like you

Just make it worst to get old, and remember.

Hudson’s funky ass basement, where the Black folks

Could afford to shop;

The Big Four raping three Black women EVERY week;

That white man walking down Dexter Avenue in 1942

Who just for the hell of it shot the first ten Black Buck Boys

He passed

And the jury found him guilty of aggravated manslaughter

And suspended his sentence,

And the mayor of East Detroit threw him a party.

The Black woman, as beautiful as you, who because she was yellow

Was raped by seven White men on Gratiot Avenue and

Thrown in front of a bus.

“That nigger bitch had the nerve to be yellow and look like a decent White woman,

One of the rapists said in his defense

Three members of the jury pool nodded their sympathy

(that bitch deserved what she got);

And Dr. Ossian Sweet who took his shotgun up,

Loaded it, sat by the window on his house on Garland street

And said to his beautiful, yellow wife,

“The next White man steps onto my property,

“imuh let this do the talkin’ they can stay on the right track

To nine mile and mack if they wanna

I ain’t going nowhere but to the morgue to identify their ass”

And he did

The Algiers Hotel

Where Black folks weren’t asking to be understood

But were asking whitey to stand still long enough

To draw a bead on his ass.

(She’d fought their ass before)

“How can you shoot an innocent White man?

Somebody asked the beautiful Assata Shakur

“Exhale, lead his ass a little, and hold your breath as you

Squeeze off your shot,” she answered cooly.

Beonce, did you hear that?

A Reply-My reply to Them That Know Don’t Say

By Mitzi Kay Jackson

Naw see she don’t know

She listen to the color green

    And women who believe in

Using what you got to get what you want

Killing more wit honey literally, Honey

she don’t know

fat and old means a lot

specially if you wanting to kick history’s ass, you know

yes I’ve heard you’ve done it before

ancestors’ knowledge is what you hold

    some holding on to it as if it were gold in which you give freely professor

got women like me traveling over desert dust roads

      to know what you know

will make fist will take risk

    to know what you know

will roll over like a well trained dog

women like me, yellow and all ain’t never been beautiful

been cute, sweet “meat”

been hot and sexy and sexy ass hell

    but never beautiful

been made to believe the only thing worth offering is “holes”

“that go everywhere I go”

I’ll sit at your feet and listen to stories

Take gear in yard and practive arms

I don’t remember shit

But I read

I see my men in lynchings

(I say my cause they could have easily came from me)

Sisters bending over in stenches

Children who don’t listen

(and who they got worth listening too non-violence doggone)

And far too many niggas dying wit their shoes on

Left with empty hearts at sentencing

Angry hearts

Angry kicking history’s ass hearts

You witnessing

I can learn

I can aim

I can pull the trigger

I will whop history’s ass with you

I don’t remember shit

     But I read

I know what’s going on up the street

from me

Oh niggas angry

Fighting all the time

We broke and ain’t got much hope

Oh we’s fighting all the time

Shipping the young off in boat loads to the new world of gated fences

And butter greased anius

Got so many women loving women

               That dress and act like men

Making deposits on lifetime trips to those gated fences

Whipping histories ass professor

Snatch Willie Lynch face right off his ass professor

Honor the Gods so they can warn Damballah King’s and Queen’s

Kill the savages on the shore

    Make the Ivory Coast red

Bleeding like the Nile

Then let bouncy Beonce

    Bounce for amusement

And not at the expense of our daughters waiting to grow

No professor I don’t remember shit

Ain’t never ever never been beautiful

Been hot, fine and sexy

Sexy as hell

But I can read

Even if you weren’t referring to me