My Skin

My Skin
--Natalie Merchant



Take a look at my body
Look at my hands
There's so much here that I don't understand
Your face say these promises
Whispered like prayers
I don't need them
Because I've been treated so wrong
I've been treated so long
As if I'm becoming untouchable
Well, content loves the silence
It thrives in the dark
With fine winding tendrils
That strangle the heart
They say that promises sweeten the blow
But I don't need them, no
I don't need them
I've been treated so wrong
I've been treated so long
As if I'm becoming untouchable
I'm the slow dying flower
In the frost killing hour
Sweet turning sour and untouchable
Oh, I need the darkness
The sweetness
The sadness
The weakness
Oh, I need this
I need a lullaby
A kiss good night
Angel sweet love of my life
Oh, I need this
I'm the slow dying flower
In the frost killing hour
Sweet turning sour and untouchable
Do you remember the way that you touched me before
All the trembling sweetness I loved and adored
Your face saving promises whispered like prayers
I don't need them
Oh, I need the darkness
The sweetness
The sadness
The weakness
Oh, I need this
I need a lullaby
A kiss good night
Angel sweet love of my life
Oh, I need this
Well is it dark enough
Can you see me
Do you want me
Can you reach me
Oh, I'm leaving
You better shut your mouth
And hold your breath
And kiss me now
And catch your death
Oh, I mean this
Oh, I mean this

Stop Throwing My Country To The Wind

Stop Throwing My Country To The Wind
---Simin Behbahani (2009)(Translated by Kaveh Safa and Farzaneh Milani)

If the flames of anger rise any higher in this land
Your name on your tombstone will be covered with dirt.

You have become a babbling loudmouth.
Your insolent ranting, something to joke about.

The lies you have found, you have woven together.
The rope you have crafted, you will find around your neck.

Pride has swollen your head, your faith has grown blind.
The elephant that falls will not rise.

Stop this extravagance, this reckless throwing of my country to the wind.
The grim-faced rising cloud, will grovel at the swamp's feet.

Stop this screaming, mayhem, and blood shed.
Stop doing what makes God's creatures mourn with tears.

My curses will not be upon you, as in their fulfillment.
My enemies' afflictions also cause me pain.

You may wish to have me burned , or decide to stone me.
But in your hand match or stone will lose their power to harm me.

Christians Murdered Indians

Christians Murdered Indians
---Corporate Avenger

Even in the initial stages of contact between European Christians and Native Indian people the stage was set for ethnocentrism, and the attitude towards the Indians was that of Christian superiority. The Indians were read a proclamation in Spanish which they had no hope of understanding, they had no hope of understanding the death sentence they were being read, and it went something like this:

"We ask and require you to acknowledge the church as the ruler and superior of the whole world and the high priest called pope and in his name the king of Spain as lords of this land. If you submit we shall receive you in all love and charity and shall leave you, your wives and children and your lands free without servitude, but if you do not submit we shall powerfully enter into your country and shall make war against you, we shall take you and your wives and your children and shall make slaves of them and we shall take away your goods and shall do you all the harm and damage we can."

2000 years ago we were all tribal.
Then came the missionaries with their fucking bible.
1492 began the termination
The holocaust of our Indian nations
Yeah, with Christian love and a moral authority
They killed our medicine men and stole our country
I never claimed this shit was poetry
It's just the fucking lies of Christianity
You will pray to the lord and get down on your knees
Here's a cross for your back and the coughing disease
Though you helped us survive we will laugh while you bleed
Then deny what we did, write our own history
We will kidnap your children and cut off their hair
Silence their language and outlaw their prayers
Beat them blind until they believe
In the blood of Jesus Christ our king
Christians murdered Indians
Columbus murdered children and now we have a holiday
Still you want to deny your history
Look to the sky for your god to justify
As you commit cultural genocide
Christians came and the natives they did hang
13 at a time for Jesus and his gang
We are the ones you had to dehumanize
So your murder and greed could be justified
The belly of the church is full
With the blood of all those heathen fools
Who would not receive the gift of Christ?
So we burned them as a sacrifice
To our baby killing god above
To our mother church and all her love
We will steal their gods and subjugate
Those who don't believe we'll ahnilate

"The Spaniards made bets as to who would slit a man in two or cut of his head with one blow. They tore babies from their mother's breast by their feet and dashed their head against the rocks. They hanged Indians by thirteen in honor and reverence for their redeemer and their twelve apostles. They put wood underneath and with fire burned the Indians alive."

Christians murdered Indians
We believe in the earth, the sky and dreams
The universe and the creator who gave us these
The sacred gift of life and human beings
That makes you perpetrate the hate to ahnilate
So here I am the savage civilized
Voice of the dead and my ancestor's cries
And like the ghosts of this land you can't erase
I see blood on the hands of the master race.
500 years of manifest destiny
500 years of resistance to the enemy
You have faith in the rivers, the mountains, the trees
We've a murdering god to replace all of these
With the blood of forgiveness you too can be free
Or the wrath of Jehovah you're sure to receive
We will baptize you with the blood of the lamb
With the sword and the gospel we will conquer your land
You will join our church and be glad to be saved
Or we'll slaughter your children and your women we'll rape.
Christians murdered Indians
I see blood on the hands of the master race.

The Backlash Blues

This was one of the last of Langston Hughes' protest poems before his death in 1967. The backlash is the white racist reaction to the US civil rights movement which began around 1964 with increased racist attacks on blacks in the US, the war in Vietnam and the subsequent diminishing of prospects for fairer society for the American poor. Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was born in Missouri and grew up in Kansas. Despite his often lonely childhood, a dislocated family and the experience of racist contempt, he became an internationally renowned writer, one of the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s. The Backlash Blues was made into a song, sung by Nina Simone.



The Backlash Blues
by Langston Hughes

Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash,
Just who do you think I am?
You raise my taxes, freeze my wages,
Send my son to Vietnam.

You give me second class houses,
Second class schools.
Do you think that colored folks
Are just second class fools?

When I try to find a job
To earn a little cash,
All you got to offer
Is a white backlash.

But the world is big,
Big and bright and round--
And it's full of folks like me who are
Black, Yellow, Beige, and Brown.

Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash,
What do you think I got to lose?
I'm gonna leave you, Mister Backlash,
Singing your mean old backlash blues.

You're the one
Will have the blues.
not me--
Wait and see!

Let America be America again

We've made great strides over the last 70 years, but too much of what Langston Hughes wrote in 1938 is apropos today as well as then.

Let America be America again (1938)
--- Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Dr. Martin Luther King

"Gil Scott-Heron was ... a key figure in the movement to create a holiday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. He's got a new book coming out called Last Holiday, all about the history behind the holiday. He talked with us about how Stevie Wonder toured the country back in the 80's trying to convince the country at that time that this needed to happen. Scott-Heron was with him on that tour."

--- NPR The Bryan Park Project 2008/01

Dr. Martin Luther King
--- Gil Scott-Heron (2008)

I suppose that I had honestly never given much thought
As to how much of a battle would have to be fought
To get most Americans to agree and to say
That there actually should be a black holiday.

But what a hell of a challenge
How far was Stevie willing to go
To make them pass an amendment
That had been left on the table ten years in a row.

I never doubted that Stevie was sincere
But how many minds had come together
In the past twelve years?

How many folks recognize how much America had to grow
And who else had been qualified to lead us where we had to go?

I liked the idea of a minister being around
When racing for such high stakes
To have his foot near the brakes.
Because of what really had gone down
Because America could have blown up
Before we ever had a chance to really say we had grown up.

Gandhi took non-violence with him when he died
Over here there was non-violence but only on one side
When white folks beat up and killed people that you knew
You decided to direct your anger at a building or two.

Instead of making the Old Testament a civil rights guide
And saying an eye for an eye would now be justified
We were told to accept that some white folks had no class
As opposed to condemning all the white folks en masse.

We determined that remaining peaceful was the best thing
And directing those feelings were men like Dr. King.

Through a storm of provocation to fight
We saw that in order to change America
You must change the law

We were called militant and radical and made to look bad
Because we were fighting for things that most Americans already had
But between what’s written and what’s done is the real thing
So America might not have made it without Dr. Martin Luther King.

Happy Birthday

A belated Martin Luther King Jr's birthday prop to the inimitable Stevie Wonder who more than anyone added the necessary impetus to make MLK's birthday a national holiday.



Happy Birthday
--- Stevie Wonder (1973)

You know it doesn't make much sense
There ought to be a law against
Anyone who takes offense
At a day in your celebration
'Cause we all know in our minds
That there ought to be a time
That we can set aside
To show just how much we love you
And I'm sure you will agree
It couldn't fit more perfectly
Than to have a world party on the day you came to be

Chorus
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
(Repeat)

I just never understood
How a man who died for good
Could not have a day that would
Be set aside for his recognition
Because it should never be
Just because some cannot see
The dream as clear as he
That they should make it become an illusion
And we all know everything
That he stood for time will bring
For in peace our hearts will sing
Thanks to Martin Luther King

Chorus
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
(Repeat)

Bridge
Why has there never been a holiday
Where peace is celebrated
all throughout the world

The time is overdue
For people like me and you
You know the way to truth
Is love and unity to all God's children
It should be a great event
And the whole day should be spent
In full remembrance
Of those who lived and died for the oneness of
all people
So let us all begin
We know that love can win
Let it out don't hold it in
Sing it loud as you can

Chorus
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
(4x)

(Background Stevie)
Happy birthday Ooh yeah
Happy birthday,
To you

We know the key to unity of all
People
Is in the dream that you had so
Long ago
That lives in all of the hearts
Of people
That believe in unity
We'll make the dream become
A reality
I know we will
Because our hearts tell us so