Ancestor’s Pen
Hello and welcome!
This isn’t some lame hip deep fake type shit
but I can’t help but think that as one eye takes aim,
the other stares down the gun’s barrel.
The ring of the squeezed index finger
reminds me of a tell tall tale of a tall man.
He had all the knowledge and talent
but never the fame nor fortune
because his answer was the same.
His claim being he had no step to take,
but to me always had a mouth to blame.
So although his wisdom was all but farfetched,
he lived everyday thinking he was mundane.
We would sit in a circle around a burning backwoods and fire,
making our sessions were folk
but what’s a story to black folk now?
We want action.
No time for stagnation,
we already suffer from oppression
under the thumb of this global recession.
I realised I like a good story,
so I try to take notes.
Not to do it alone. But,
my friend, my brother known him since I still kissed my father.
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Would still only work more like a translator,
no wonder my own words tend to turn their back on master.
Our ancestors bled blood for us to bleed the pen,
I couldn’t understand the hue of the fluid,
especially not on paper.
So I secretly looked up to him, he was always on the next stanza.
Thought I was lyrical too but no, I was always behind a few bars.
Pure belligerent ignorance.
All our souls would be the lesser without their milk and honey.
So why don’t you top up,
leaving your glass half empty?
They say,
maybe I agree.
“The best way to hide something from a black man is to put it in a book”,
Because there’s no time for tomes,
when there’s time to atone for.
See we’re been on the surface, floating,
either on rocky waters
or on a rock in space.
But the depth is the scary place,
where the rock says it can’t hide us.
It’s a different type of looking back,
while they look at their successors,
we’re here looking at records of their success.
~ Ancestor’s Pen. An oeuvre by Saros Grey.
