Spoken word by the spiritual poet

With the recent ongoing discourse regarding standing while America’s National Anthem is sung and respect for her flag, it reminded me of my poetic twist or perspective I had of the flag back in September of 2000.  As we seem to forget that America’s National Anthem did not always stand for us and her flag did not always pledge allegiance to us during or after the birth of this great and awesome nation.

“Red, White and Blue“

“Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light. What so proudly we hailed at the twilight last gleaming. Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight or the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming. And the rockets red glare the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh say does that star spangle banner yet wave or the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Winnowed by wanton winds of slavery, the Diaspora spouts from the womb of Middle Passage into the hull of hell’s inferno searing our souls with grievous sorrow. The manifold expanse of dawn’s early light glimpsed from fortified portals of dark dungeons, damp ships and salty seas that billows over sully souls dims in slavery’s forbidding face. With faith all but expired and hope scourged from gaunt souls, motherland’s pride slump on sable shoulders from distant ships as freedom ebbs and is swallowed up at the twilight’s last gleaming.

Broad were the stripes that effaced our names. Broad were the stripes that brought our shame. Broad were the stripes that marred and maimed. Broad were the stripes that clawed and claimed and broad were the stripes that brought our bane. There is nothing regal, righteous or royal about a broad stripe responsible for centuries of carnage. There is no anthem song-worthy of a broad stripe that demeans, demonizes, and demoralize. Nothing virtuous, valuable or viable about a broad stripe that suppresses, subdues and subjects the soul’s psyche to eternal servitude. It was this broad stripe that raised grooves of raw flesh from our backs as beasts of burden. It was this broad stripe that severed the ties that bind between husband and wife, mother and child, father and son, sister and brother, extended family and clan. It was this broad stripe that gnawed our skin to the bone thirty-nine times in the assemblies of the wicked to expunge freedom’s song from our solvent soul. It was this broad stripe that girded slavery’s yoke to the shoulder of our psyche. It was this broad stripe that laid the white lines of demarcation between the powerless and powerful, redeemed and irredeemable, righteous ones and wicked ones and ruling class and black caste. Alas, it was this broad stripe, salted and sated with Satan’s sinful saints that scourged cowardice into our clans and soiled our souls with eternal sorrow.

These malignant broad stripes wailed for centuries and have beaten memories of a people born under the rising sun, born into bloodline of kings and queens, prince and princesses, raised in courts of dynasties that transcended kings and kingdoms and lived in the heartland that cradled civilization to the brink of extinction. A people of wisdom, a people of honor, a people of valor, a people of providence and a people of God’s history shredded beyond recognition. Now all that is left is the vestige of a people whose souls personify pain, broken hearts that hurt and hemorrhage and backs embossed with black swollen scabbed stripes of servitude and subjugation annulled of hope, heritage and history.

The bright stars gallantly streaming canvassed the night sky with a forbidding glow as it were an all seeing eye that trumpets the fowler at our fleeing to foothills of freedom. We longed for thick darkness to shade our silhouette soul and yearned for ominous fog to enshroud ebony’s fleeting feet. In the debt of night’s sleep, stealth souls steel away beneath swamps, everglades and foreboding forests that trailed for miles following yonder star to reach the fringes of freedom and tell her of our innate desire to live and not die that we might be saved from the sons of Satan. Even under heaven’s deluge, death was dared and we fled through raging white waters as ebony footprints swept away beneath death’s cold sullen stream and others laid waste ashore on the ramparts of Babylon River’s stormy banks.

Woe unto the people of the sun that sees the rocket’s red glare, bombs bursting in air or the flag’s silhouette against the night sky for the number of their days is done. No ears have heard, hearts conceived or eyes have seen the hands of wickedness exact such sin on the sons of men. For the rockets’ red glare set them ablaze impaled in green pastures by rivers of still waters, hanging from trees and trunks and bundled burning in barns and trenches in the tomb of dark night. Oh, the blast of the shot and shell that shook us to our death and dismembered our body from our last breath. Yes, the deafening bombs that exhumed us from catacombs of caves and holes of hell to our final fate as we lay bare before the star light skies to meet our Maker as we engaged the red glare and our bleeding souls seared as it soars to final rest in eternity’s home.

Alas, did the star spangled banner yet wave in favor of the sun people? Did the star spangled banner lease or lend land to the clandestine contraband? Did the star spangled banner free the kennels, hulls and tombs of our people? Was the star spangle banner a haven or home to ebony souls? Was there a brave star in the land of the free to raise the watermark of freedom beyond the levels of hue and hair, fiction and fear and ruffians rule? No, in all this, the star spangled banner continued to reign and rule with a heart of stone and fists of fury.

Behold, a people of bondage, burdened beneath Babylon called upon the name of the LORD and tarried for years, decades, yeah even centuries, crying to their God asking, “How long must we endure the hands of the sprawling wicked? How long must we perish in the fields of fire? How long must we lament from the loss of our loved ones? How long must we sojourn in the valley of vicissitude where we are viciously violated and vilified? And how long must we cry Abba, Father, hear our earnest cry as your people perish in a pagan land, a country adorned with red, white, and blue?”