The Revolution

The Revolution

By Amethyst Jefferson-Roberts

The Revolution

The Revolution will not be televised

It starts in the home, parents raising children, not children raising children

Going back to our roots, teaching our little ones that on the backs of our ancestors we stand

Through their blood sweat and tears, I stand today with the world at my fingertips, I stand

With the world revolved around me

With the motivation to obtain an education, the miseducation of a Negro

Oh No that will not be me

On the backs of my ancestors I stand that’s the way my parents taught me

Stop the violence; drop the guns and the drugs

Stop with all that baby daddy nonsense; stop the war, not the war in IRAQ all though that needs to go.

The war in the homes, in the streets, in the communities

Claiming a piece of asphalt that doesn’t even belong to you

Claiming a street, a block, a park, is straight stupidity

Saying my gang is my family but the last time I checked, you didn’t have to kill a piece of someone else’s family to be loved by your own hmmmm.

Screaming ahhhh my child my baby

Hearing a mother’s scream in the middle of the night

Tears flowing down her face like the Nile River from my mother Africa

Because you took her son, her daughter, in the name of a color, a color

It’s a never ending storm these gangs his homie died so yo homie had to go

Shots fired screams heard

Life is no more the focus the kill is the game

Six feet under soon to be forgotten is where this game will soon end

The revolution will not be televised

Daughters without their fathers is a disaster in the making you soon will see

Daughters never having their fathers say I love you

Driving them to seek it from somewhere else

A man, a grown man, who only wants her innocence

Screaming giving birth to a child she did not want to have and 15years from now

She can’t even have a steady relationship

Hoping from man to man lying down with someone’s else’s man, or husband, or even worse, someone she didn’t even know

Now she’s classified as a hoe, a homewreckin hoe, all because her dad never said I love you, your beautiful, smart and deserve respect

The revolution will not be televised

The revolution is the home, is the family, is the community standing strong

Because believe it or not

It takes a village to raise a child

Our ancestors knew that

Where did we go wrong?

Thinking it could all be done on our own is where we went wrong

People take independence as strength and dependence as weakness, but even smart people know you cannot hold the whole world on your shoulders on your own

At least not for too long

The revolution will not be televised

You, are the one you, have been waiting for

You are the change, and the strength,

You are the revolution.