This recording was a part of the "State of the Ghetto Address" and dedicated to Brother Malcolm X at Western Washington University. Students created a day of celebration on May 19, 2000. Blackman Preach was honored to be a student on the original committee that organized the Remembrance Day for Brother Malcolm X. He was one of the student poets and read Bloody Revolution.

Click here to listen to Blackman Preach read this poem.

Bloody Revolution

I am acknowledging the manslaughter

murder

murderers                 

you assassinated him

the bottomless grave thinker

on his hiatus

strategizing while working the campaign against

America’s injustice of

        harrassing him

        following him

        challenging him

while feasting at his dinner table?

before his first child Attallah was conceived

Denmark Vesey was screaming

a bloody revolution.

 

From the podium

journalists hustled footage of the leader

speaking - speak outs

of the child pimping-addict hustler

        gambling

        satan’s

        prisoners

I seized a glimpse of this nationalist leader

as articulate the demonstration of power

with oral narratives motioning with his hand-out

he directed the grassroots

in the ghet-to and

David Walker was screaming

a bloody revolution.

 

Unlocking a

        pen-uh

        jailhouse rock 

        of a

        double edge

        ministrieeeeee’s martyr

where the ballot seared

the bullet

connecting Malik Malcolm

with other classes and races

before the dismantlers

and conspirators

paralleled men and women

with a degenerate foundation

knowing

Nat Tuner was screaming

a bloody revolution.

 

I stand where he stood

the bleeder of death

like a thief in broad daylight

we all were watching

        knowing

the authorities and the nation

were in on it

shifting the aim of Malcolm’s story

        media and government

are the real blame for the mourners

but the leadership kept

Kwame Nkrumah screaming

a bloody revolution.

 

Yeah I fought in

World War I - II and III

        Vietnam

Saudi

Iraq

Afghanistan

        the Gulf of all the wars

you’ve created

on enemy lines that wasn’t mine

they knew it

you knew it

while Dr. King

was screaming

a bloody revolution.

Through the eyes of the womb

his ideas of being born anew

Malcolm’s actual birth is almost near

but you still

        have not

        figured out

what I’m trying to say

the babe was

discharge Malcolm Little

the prison’s hustling pimp-out addict

Malcolm X-

the rehabilitated philosopher               

El-Hajj Malik El Shabazz-

a genius blessed by Allah

the martyr came out the archives         

screaming - scream - screaming

        and I mean

screaming - scream - screaming

        a damn bloody revolution.

The preceeding words are lyrics from the CD State of the Ghetto Address

Click here to listen to Blackman Preach read this poem. 

BlackCommentator.com Spoken Word Columnist, Poet Blackman Preach (Cedric T. Bolton), is a poet (spoken word artist) and producer, born in Pascagoula, Mississippi and raised in Paterson, New Jersey. Cedric received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Western Washington University and currently resides, with his wife, in Syracuse, New York.  He is the Founder of Poetic Black Fusion, a writers' workshop that provides access and opportunities to poets of African Ancestry living in Central New York.  He is also the co-founder of Voices Merging, a student-run poetry organization (spoken word) at the University of Minnesota that provides a social outlet for undergraduate students to develop as writers, network and express themselves on stage. He has been writing poetry for 14 years and is published in the Ethnic Student Center's Newsletter at Western Washington University, The Spokesman Recorder, and St. Cloud Times. Click here to contact Blackman Preach.

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