Brown Energy

For many a days, I swam under the sun,

Lookin’ to get browner to see how it’s done.

Maybe I just fix the Africa within me

Without masculine energy

Trying to take the lead of this motherland, internally

Whiles all are trying to see, trying to know

And I’m trying to save myself from being a ‘ho’

Wanting to believe in sacred Africa again

Trying to reconnect to a source greater than–

That says quietly, “Baby I see you, maybe you can make yourself one, you know, until it becomes that, like that sun.”

But it instead is still with, until silence surrounds

As if we’ve become a bush here on these here rich dirt grounds

Being offered a discontented view of what is actually there…

Men and women used up

Then dropped off as if in a modern-day slavery scene

That conveniently nobody can see now as if they’re covered with luck

Previously worn by you or me

Previously ridiculed internally

Now feeling stuck

As this begins to wallow…

Driven to become our own slave masters

That use “the brown ones” and then abuse