Wakanda Forever: 99 Bullets, Chicago 1969
By Eric f. Maxie
I
Heroes perish
And some are resurrected
Their spirits return from eternal dimensions
Through portals pierced
By poetic imagination
Re-animated by truth
Summoned
By invocation
When is existence
A super power
When the living rise
And will not be silenced
When the dead rise
And will no longer sleep
When bullets murder but
Do not kill
II
No Black boy chooses war
Fred
Conscripted
With all choice abolished
You fought
And when you died
Inadequate assassins came
To murder your memory
They called you agitator
Hoped to impugn your grave reputation
Because you fed poor children
Because you conceived a
Rainbow coalition
Because you stood before us
Shield-like
Such sedition in this society
Is punishable by death
They kill
Completely
Til nothing is left or
So they think
But
When the last breath is the first breath
Meager concepts of eternity are
Neutered while
Meager leaders and
Unfit oracles as
Prognosticators of an incomplete ascendency
Gloat
And assert victory
They cannot see
Your immaterial meaning as anything other than
Ruin
Cannot fathom when you begin
A revolution as wavelength
Impulse
Purging wind
They think they got away with murder
The body long since disappeared
The Black Panther that they feared
Vanquished
III
There will always be frail despots
Fred
Sad Herods with no prophetic vision
Half-assed Hoovers and
Hate filled Hanrahans
Who fear divine succession
Who seek to kill messiahs
But fail to kill the message
It’s time for you to rise now
Fred
Wake from your slumber
Dull sublunary sleep
Is not the end of proceeding
You will live
Another be/ing
Beyond this plain of pain and pleading
Your life
Has a greater meaning
Than can be murdered
That bullets cannot kill
That hatred cannot end
I summon you
Upon the inscrutable wind
Again
Begin
By Eric f. Maxie
I
Heroes perish
And some are resurrected
Their spirits return from eternal dimensions
Through portals pierced
By poetic imagination
Re-animated by truth
Summoned
By invocation
When is existence
A super power
When the living rise
And will not be silenced
When the dead rise
And will no longer sleep
When bullets murder but
Do not kill
II
No Black boy chooses war
Fred
Conscripted
With all choice abolished
You fought
And when you died
Inadequate assassins came
To murder your memory
They called you agitator
Hoped to impugn your grave reputation
Because you fed poor children
Because you conceived a
Rainbow coalition
Because you stood before us
Shield-like
Such sedition in this society
Is punishable by death
They kill
Completely
Til nothing is left or
So they think
But
When the last breath is the first breath
Meager concepts of eternity are
Neutered while
Meager leaders and
Unfit oracles as
Prognosticators of an incomplete ascendency
Gloat
And assert victory
They cannot see
Your immaterial meaning as anything other than
Ruin
Cannot fathom when you begin
A revolution as wavelength
Impulse
Purging wind
They think they got away with murder
The body long since disappeared
The Black Panther that they feared
Vanquished
III
There will always be frail despots
Fred
Sad Herods with no prophetic vision
Half-assed Hoovers and
Hate filled Hanrahans
Who fear divine succession
Who seek to kill messiahs
But fail to kill the message
It’s time for you to rise now
Fred
Wake from your slumber
Dull sublunary sleep
Is not the end of proceeding
You will live
Another be/ing
Beyond this plain of pain and pleading
Your life
Has a greater meaning
Than can be murdered
That bullets cannot kill
That hatred cannot end
I summon you
Upon the inscrutable wind
Again
Begin
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