And I keep thinking back to my life here
And I keep thinking back to my life right here
in this white power center
ain't no misbehavin' here
in the ivory tower
abounded with liberals and marxist scholars
where liberalism is rhetorically defined
as a floating signifier associated with
the ever-growing pony tail
the peace sign
the old leather jacket from undergrad
the backwards baseball cap
nightly homage to the celestial herb to justify being a function
commitments
commitment to the metaphysics of diversity
commitments
to the environment to animal rights
the pet projects
and pet cultures
signifying signifiers
are recreating structures
these signifying signifiers are recreating structures
these signifying signifiers are recreating bourgeois structures
bourgeois bourgeoisie bougi bouginess
blackness bouginess blackness
contradictions
disjunctures
underplayed identities
downpressing privilege
down
down
down you got to keep it down
sometimes it just wants to rise up
but you gotta keep it down
Shut your mouth!!!!
stuff it in your mouth
just keep your mouth shut and get out
ram it down your throat
deep down your throat
swallow
it
down
you're being forced
to
deep throat
But I don't want to
I don't want to
swallow
it
down
you gotta keep it down
you gotta keep it down
why you have to be down to keep it real
downplaying privilege
little white rebels wanna be niggers
and niggers wanna be niggaz
bourgeois blues
opportunities denied
blackness bouginess
disjunctures?
contradictions?
In Haiti the bourgeoisie funded coups
in Jamaica uptown bougies tried to silence a revolution
but rastafari had a free black mind
so they self-fashioned an everyday resistance
the self-fashioning of an everyday SEXIST resistance
an everyday HOMOPHOBIC resistance
‹don't let them fool ya
or even try to school ya›
blackness bouginess blackness
in the Caribbean bouginess has funded revolutions
little white rebels wanna be niggers
and rebelling niggers wanna be niggaz
these signifying signifiers are just recreating bourgeois structures
Can life exist without ideals
Can life exists without dreams
where does your soul go
when all you do is function
where does your spirit go
when all you do is function
Lately I have been thinking a lot about writing
a poem about class comfort
and color and privilege and guilt
about the social luxury of whiteness
about the social luxury of the white skin
a poem about the rules of the game
and I think back to the keeping it real conference
how we had the rhetoric to deconstruct performance
the performance of blackness and black identities
but we couldn't talk about black privilege
for fear of having to talk about black guilt
like the good doctor says we can't talk
