Bookmark and Share
Click to go to the home page.
Click to send us your comments and suggestions.
Click to learn about the publishers of BlackCommentator.com and our mission.
Click to search for any word or phrase on our Website.
Click to sign up for an e-Mail notification only whenever we publish something new.
Click to remove your e-Mail address from our list immediately and permanently.
Click to read our pledge to never give or sell your e-Mail address to anyone.
Click to read our policy on re-prints and permissions.
Click for the demographics of the BlackCommentator.com audience and our rates.
Click to view the patrons list and learn now to become a patron and support BlackCommentator.com.
Click to see job postings or post a job.
Click for links to Websites we recommend.
Click to see every cartoon we have published.
Click to read any past issue.
Click to read any think piece we have published.
Click to read any guest commentary we have published.
Click to view any of the art forms we have published.

The current issue is always free to everyone

If you need the access available to a
and cannot afford the $24.95 subscription price, request a complimentary subscription here.

Look How Long - Poetic Black Fusion By Poet Blackman Preach, BC Spoken Word Columnist (includes MP3 audio)
Click here to listen to Blackman Preach read this poem.

LOOK HOW LONG

Look how long

look how long

Black man

the struggle still

 goes on.

HISTORICALLY

we’ve come around the block

more

than a household visiting friend

they may try to kill us

they may

they may try to deny us

they may even say there is no end

I will tell you there’s an end...

there is a end.

Look how long

look how long

Black woman

the crowned jeweled Queen

the mother of all roots

how can they deny

you

 who gave BIRTH

to them all

a Black beauty see

I can’t resist telling you

every day of your existence...

Look how long

 look how long

church

that we’ve denied Christ

has God denied you?

NO

Jehovah has been there all the time

on time

tho’ you have questioned Yahweh

in

Malcolm & Betty

circumstances

he has managed

to do you good—tho’

you have no clue

no idea

how he has blessed

you to see another day

another day…

Look how long

 look how long

LOOK!

How much longer

 is it going to take us

to get this thing right?

the human beings

that we have been called to be

that we have the audacity

of screwing it up

 not even fighting for what we

believe in

but

rather

fight each other

fight each other

check the record of time

look how long...

 

The preceeding poem is included in Blackman Preach's self published chapbook titled, "The State of the Ghetto Address."

Click here to listen to Blackman Preach read this poem.

CONGRATULATION London Ladd! Please support a friend of Blackman Preach, London Ladd, who is the illustrator of my album cover Bumpy Tymes, London Ladd is an illustrator from Syracuse, New York and has partnered with veteran author Christine King Farris for his debut children’s book March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed The World which will be released by Scholastic Inc in 2008. London is a 2006 graduate of Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. His work has been showcased in the Syracuse Everson Museum of Arts’s 2006 Everson Biennial: Beauty is in the Eye of the Artist, and public kiosk in downtown Syracuse for the Syracuse Poster Project. He has completed a mural for the Syracuse Cultural Resource Council depicting Reverand Jermaine Loguen, an abolitionist, and his family the Underground Railroad.

The story chronicles the 24 hours leading up to the historical "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 march on Washington through the eyes of his sister Christine Farris King. It will be on sale in August coinciding with the 45th anniversary of the speech.

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.

Your comments are always welcome.

e-Mail re-print notice

If you send us an e-Mail message we may publish all or part of it, unless you tell us it is not for publication. You may also request that we withhold your name.

Thank you very much for your readership.

 

February 21, 2008
Issue 265

is published every Thursday

Executive Editor:
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Publisher:
Peter Gamble
Printer Friendly Version in resizeable plain text format format

Cedille Records Sale