Bring the Noise  By Ugochi Nwaogwugwu Revolution isn’t dead, it’s a spirit living, breathing in the art.Can u feel it?  It’s calling u, calling u.What are you gonna do now that you know? 

Turntables

Turn

Tables

Make you wheel and come again

Pull it, back.  Back...

Back to front

promise of possibilities

birthed in beginnings. Back

to the not-so-distant-future. 

 

In this dimension

Massa bows down to slave, wave

hands in the air of admiration.

Corporate cockroaches are sprayed like Raid

on tracks.  Fatally

hit by the rhythm, the rebel.

A Zulu nation of new millennium guerillas

slaughter colonial sons and daughters on wax.

 

Out in the street, they call it murder….

 

Buck shots ring warrior’s cry. Sing

freedom on the one,

two, one, two, one, two.

Resurrecting windblown whispers of harmony

from the grave,

melodic muted memory.  Martyred

voices come back Nina Simone

Come back Alice Coltrane

            Come back Mahalia Jackson

 

Pray we remember

 

Resume their purposed attack within boom clap.

Our words

penetrate rapid fire,  spark

semi-automatic heartbeats to pump

in unison with mathematical precision.

Beg invisible ties connect parallel worlds

like dots. 

 

In this dimension,

roles reverse in perfect meter.

Cymbals crash like thunder.

 

Bring the noise

 

reverb legacies of pain.

Shatter glass ceilings

to fall like white reign.