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Art-&-Facts

Jeremiah Davis
Community Empowerment Association
University Of Pittsburgh '13
Business Marketing

Note to Self
When the message becomes the means the master will remain supreme
When visions emancipate themselves from dreams
Freedom eventually welcomes its slavery to the sight of things
Crowns thus get passed down to conformity which graciously chooses what's normal as its queen
Leaving leagues of people to nostalgically use old efforts to shed new lights on things

When you march Martin into the margins of your comfortability here is what you get

Masses who see mashing of concrete beneath rubber soles as dynamite when it is merely the
matchstick
We are blowing the bugle as if that is the revelation in action
This logic is like equating ones birth to mere contractions
Simple science of cause and effect has now lost logic and been repackaged as magic
In a nation that was born by tearing away from its own umbilical chord, how is it that we continue
the frivolous efforts of asking
The blueprint is stained in red, but you have only read the Rated G version in your classes
Where martyrs are painted as sweet symbols of hope instead of stair steps through the madness
We've champion the word try for so long that Icarus has become the poster child for our actions

Lady Liberty will continue to follow after her mother Eve and gleefully eat the apple
New day lynch mobs covered in blue garb and badges are only a microcosm of jurors whom
supposedly represent the collective thoughts of the masses
Appearing to only respect perceptive power and fear, but use the face of racism to mask it
I cannot march in response to a gestapo regime and remain sleep to the circumstances that justify
them playing watch dogs over out families
I cannot simply voice my anger through antics while the economic life force that runs through the
financial veins of black families is continually drain through legislative channels
Causing premature rigor mortis of black fortune despite our ingenuity to reinvigorate black business
when life seems tragic
I do not have the answers
But I show reproach towards any approach that is overtly passive
Battles are fought on many fronts but no matter the stage we must be willing expect the best while
confronting the worst that could happen

Jerimiah Davis is the winner of the Harambee Ujima Poetry Slam
sponsored by Wine and Words Pittsburgh.