nunna dat (but we)

-for dr. rhonda williams

“nunna dat, you people, my people, nunna dat

here.”  

the classroom sweats daggers,

causing vaguely assembled necks to quiver.

sandile is from jo-burg, busted-out bantustan,

journalistic creds from the white man’s heaven.

lester, with a suburban mulatto cringe,

scrawls nihilism in a two-dollar notebook.

“nunna dat, you people, my people,

for we are all the people.”

her first instruction dangles like a leech.

it sucks on our colonized psyches, 
propels itself across the turnstile
of metropolitan decay.

s’pose ta be us an' dem, yah dat’s right

ya dumb kraka in dis game da color

line da problem ‘a da 20^th cent'ry.

white is white black is black 
you gits yer fountain he gits his 
we’s only s’pose ta cum togetha

neva.

in fact, they shot martin for this egregious line:

“in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, 

but the silence of our friends.”

du bois knew class, but fled.

rhonda stays, to save all that

can be picked from the ashheap, 
then, just maybe:
re-used, re-cycled, re-animated,
made into worshipful trinkets of ideology,

glossy knicknacks of alternative economy.

a skyscraping angie davis fro

crowns a soul bruised and bittered
by countless ghetto privations, 
expected ivy league frustrations,
and university boardroom machinations,

any temptations towards selling out

rejected like bacon in a mosque.