It’s living in the now as a shadow of who and what we once wereNo
Not a shadow
But an echo
Or
Maybe a link in a chain of causalities
I reminisce about how Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon
And I forgive our trippy President for tripping
For he knew not what he did
He bought America some time with low interest socio-political emotional payments decade after decade
Culminating in the Orange Balloon Payment who is Dolt 45
And aspires to be Retribution 47
This is what we would have called — back then — an “easy credit rip-off”
Just look out of your window and watch the asphalt grow
And think on how everything is handed down.
Especially debt
There’s a war on woke so I guess I’ll sleep
Perchance to dream
Let my Afrofuturist soul fly
Maybe even time travel to yesterday
Sankofa Bird on a mission to step on the right butterfly in the past
To change our present
Maybe I’ll sit on a park bench on Florida Avenue
In Northwest Washington D.C.
With Gil Scott Heron
Wish him Happy Birthday
And ask him about all of the places he’s been
Or take 95 South all the way to Florida
And Zipity Do Da my way
To Orlando Florida
To the future site of Disney world
To discover if Walt Disney actually froze himself after death
In order to become a reanimated Ron DeSantis
Once everybody had a pistol
Everybody had a 45
We thought we had some problems then
Back in the day
Way back when
Now Balloon payment AR-15’s
Take children’s lives again
I see where we went wrong
Democracy teetering under the weight of compounding interest
Never addressing the principal
Or the principles
My dreaming shattered for want of cash payments at the point of purchase
Like we did with Louisiana
And Alaska
American gifts that keep on giving
Fentanyl is the new heroin
And death is the new methadone
Opioid balloon payments for failed drug wars
Capitalism asks how can we get them addicted
But not kill the customer
I think maybe the Sacklers came in hot and overshot on this one
And while they did stick many people
They did not stick the landing
Never mind
Why weaken the opioid
When you can sell the Naloxone over the counter
But not Mifepristone
Play me an Afrofuture
Play me an alternative reality
Play me music of the three moments — past present and future
And like the Purāṇaic Celestial Nārada, clarify my vision with your music
And your panoptic insight
With a thermin soundtrack by Sun Ra
Accompanied on harp by Swami Turiayānanda Alice Coltrane
Lyrics by Amiri Baraka and Gil Scott Heron
And the Monsters John Coltrane and Miles Davis on saxophone and trumpet respectively
If there’s a jazz heaven then you know they have a hell of a combo
Look back Sankofa Bird
Look back and see the past as you fly forward back into the future
As we keep our heads above water
And make a way when we can
Ain’t we lucky we had ‘em
Good times.
(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)
(Image Credit: Sankofa Bird / Jeffrey Waller / Greene County African American Museum)