To be Black in America —
means born with a chip on your shoulder. means a chip off the old block.
It means to come from the mud, to be mold from clay.
It means to be broken. But Don’t call us broken.
We are in the miracle business, brick by brick
we stand on the shoulders of giants,
A million man-made mountains
Marching monuments to our protected
lands, hidden hearts with air-tight
strongholds preserving our resilience,
not on white walls but in the dirt
that we made a nation.
masters of deconstruction and construction,
the constructing man depicts scenes
our spirit gardens call Consciousness.
To be Black in America is to live under pressure,
To be born to crystallize or to die.
