Author: Poorman A. Blackstar

/ Poorman A. Blackstar

The Blackstar Line

Get up, international Africans,

and take your places in a higher realm.

We are sons and daughters of the most high

civilization that was ever known.

Africa was a Garden of Eden

long before it was conquered by heathens.

You don’t have to be religious to see

that the men and women in the bible

were Africans, its almost history.

You have to seek the truth to reach the truth.

The bass and drum are calling you to come.

Plenty will hear but just a few will know

many are called, but just a few will go.

Many an African American

will go down with Sinner City and drown

because you can’t swim in a sea of sin,

especially when it’s boiling.

You can’t fly in sky that’s polluted

with misconceptions and obvious lies.

You have to know yourself to love yourself.

The Blackstar Line is the best way to get

from where you are to where you want to be.

You don’t have to flee like no refugee,

just read the teachings of Marcus Garvey.

You carry Africa with you inside.

1985

African Sleeping Sickness

/ Poorman A. Blackstar

Black people who live in America are suffering from a social disease

given to us on purpose by the people who don’t want to see us free.

The white germs of laziness and self-hate permeate the radio and tv.

The radio keeps us shuffling in place with songs about romantic love and sex.

Television teaches us how to act like our oppressors want us to behave.

We only get to do the darkest deeds in blue movies and in black comedies,

voluntary victims on the front lines, anxious to die for American lies.

When it comes to television programs we are wide awake and interested,

but, when it comes to African culture, we just close our eyes and fall fast asleep.

Our children imitate stereotypes in a modern day slave mentality.

I don’t believe the news I see on tv, because the news is being brought to you

by the sons of the men who once enslaved you, so how can you expect to get the truth?

I don’t read the Daily News or the Times; that’s where the sleeping sickness hides.

The daily newspapers and magazines are contaminated with the disease.

It’s hard to turn off the media, look yourself in the face and love yourself these days.

You can wear your hair anyway you like, but don’t lye and say you love yourself.

You are still imitating your oppressors; it’s a very serious condition

and you have a duty to yourself and you have a duty to your people

to overcome this oppressive illness.  If we don’t wake up soon we won’t wake up.

The survival of Africa depends on the revival of we Africans.

1984

Every Thing I Want

/ Poorman A. Blackstar

I have almost everything I want.
Some days I want less; some days I want more;
Sometimes I think I want too much.
Sometimes I think I could sell drugs.
But, most of my business would be with myself.
We justify what we do.
We believe in killing when we have to.
We believe in killing certain species.
Some we want to save
and some we have to cull.
We believe in keeping pets
but we keep on eating meat.
Sometimes we pet our food.
Sometimes we eat our pets.
When my dog got sick I had to kill him.
No one would come and take him away.
A stain remains on the hardwood floor.
And now we have two dogs.
Dogs don’t seem to want very much.
They want to be petted and to go outside.
The older I get the more I want
to be like my dog.
Not the one that died.

2014