Poetics. Dirty minded people! This is the piece I'm performing at the Kwanzaa Gala presented by the Bridge Builders in Portland Oregon. Enjoy.
Fresh 4 2 thousand & 7
I'm searching for a B-R-A-N-D-N-E-W-M-E.
And it's not in clothes made by Sean John Diddy, on T.V. with Fiddy cent to the dollar, ain't a flavor of vitamin water.
It ain't in a holler back jack move to the grooves of misguided youth that haven't heard Aretha a.k.a the truth Franklin. Not Kirk Franklin. I ain't rankin' or playing the dozens dirty.
I got love for my cousin, on my momma's side, 5th removed, related by marriage. I swear if I'm lying, I'm denying, then flying, then trying to find a B-R-A-N-D-N-E-W-M-E, to be thee epitamy, G-E-N-T-L-E-M-A-N sync with G-O-D's thrown on it.
Cause that's Fresh!
That's sunrise on Portland Hillsides Fresh! That's from the moment I wake up, breakfast in the morning, I'm talking scrambled cheddar eggs, hickory smoked bacon, grits or cream of wheat for the white folks, Fresh!
This kind of fresh puts a smile lips when you kiss the new day.
This kind of fresh, puts a salt-n-pep in the step when you walk this way.
You walk with purpose, You love with purpose, you fail with purpose, you succeed with purpose.
Some feel nervous and that's ok. They haven't witnessed so much fresh on display.
All that feel delay, A little apprehensive, you can't be blamed and you shouldn't feel shame.
You have just been assaulted by stale and the lame.
The do anything; say anything for fame, lame.
The Iraq war lame,
Jena 6 lame,
The Hip Hop blame game lame,
such a shame, throwing rocks in a glass house of pain.
But fresh is the way of change.
Fresh is stealth wealth, no flossin' necessary.
Fresh is respect for all even advisories.
Fresh is land ownership in all territories.
Fresh is sharing our triumphs via these stories.
Fresh is the rebirth of a nation, poised and ready to complete equations and solve for x problems. Become columns of support our coliseums depend on, and brave any Katrina storm.
We shall be better!
Enough with the mo' better blues. Do the right thing; choose a B-R-A-N-D new you.
Define your own hues and color palettes,
be the work of art that's too beautiful for N-words of the past.
Defy the roll of class bathe in the wealth of abundance.
The old mold would hold us in abodes too small for these roles.
Mind Liberators, youth educators,
the peoples' motivator, peace navigator,
riding endless elevators to heights seldom seen.
Visions pristine in the clarity of thought. All this from what you bought.
Not by dollars and cents, but what you bought with this (point to the mind).
Dreams that are visions, have no choice to come true.
This is what you need to be the Brand New You!
