GoSetaPhire

 APRIL IS NATIONAL POETRY MONTH!

Today, the spotlight shines on an Iconic, Powerful, Revolutionary Sister. A Political Activist and Political Prisoner. The Former Communications Secretary of The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Now, a Professor of Law. Without further ado, I present...

KATHLEEN CLEAVER

THE BLACK MASS NEEDS BUT ONE CRUCIFIXION

Malcolm X died for us

We will have no more religious executions

no more political assassinations

no more murdering of black man

in the streets of Babylon

The Black mass needs but one crucifixion

And in that death

On the cross of America

We all received a new birth

For in us awoke a new life

Set afire by the cry of

Black Power

That burned in Watts, that burned in Newark, that

burned in Detroit

And that burns in Huey's soul

Brought alive by Malcolm, brought awake by Stokely,

we will be brought to motion by Huey P. Newton

Move to defend ourselves against the massive onslaught

Of cracker killers who hate and fear us

Of coward white men with lynch mobs after us

Ritualizing their insanity and inhumanity

with castration and death by fire

By police squad

By unemployment and starvation

By white-only torture

In the black streets of stench and filth and mire

Up against a wall of fear and hatred and bloodshed

Chained to our blackness like slaves on a

plantation

And beaten in our blackness like slaves on a

plantation

Although we are supposedly free

To go to school and give birth and get married and

drive Cadillacs

But the pain involved and the struggle required

Just to live in this madness for just one more day

Is more than a man can say

He must just pick up the gun

Refuse to run

Stand on his feet

And act like a man

Demand that he be free

By any means necessary, demand that he be free

And take his freedom from those that own him

Take his freedom by any means necessary

If death in the gas chamber stare him in the face

Malcolm told us that he would be killed

And when he died his words came true

Huey told us to defend our lives

To stop the tide of genocide

The gas chamber will not be his fate

By any means necessary

HUEY P. NEWTON MUST BE SET FREE;

The black mass need but one

crucifixion