YGB the POEM
Hodari Davis & Kahlil Chatmon
These are songs
Written for Black Children to sing
Elegies to a forgotten past
These are poems
Written in honor of those warriors, freedom fighters, artists, ancestors
Determined to put in the minds, mouths, hearts and souls of our people
These words are mantras
For late night meditation
Meant to be dreamed and memorized
Recited and performed
These are lessons
Meant to be taught in real time
The making of heroes requires repetition
The making of sheroes requires consistency, requires reciprocity,
Culture
To save ourselves,
We must save them
You must save us
We must save you
Requires awareness, acceptance, actual application of what we know is right
Out of the mouths of babies
You’ve got to do better
We must expect better for you
for ourselves
We cannot become the wretched of the earth
The forgotten victims of our own undereducation
Willing slaves feeding a system bent on our annihilation
These songs were written for us
So we survive another generation
We cannot afford to not know the words.
