MAMA ROSE
by Archie Shepp
Yeah...
They all sayin' that he's dead (Malcolm X) and every flower is still
Well I just wanna tell you Mama Rose, we are the victims
You know what am I gonna say to my sons?
Well I'm gonna tell them that death clocks the Potomac in a scarlet show!
And that the pillow beneath you is not here...
Well, I want you to take this ex-cannibal's kiss
and turn it into a Revolution!
Don't you know that my stale flem is the sludge of factories spat into the sky?
And the flies that hover over your yellow and crusted eyes
Well baby, they're the centurions of Hannibal wandering at you, lying there, your simmering hopes and jelly corpse turned up to the sky, like a putrefying Congolese
after the Americans have come to help.
I say peace! Peace good woman!
That once brought me home
Banana, pudding in a jar
Could never conceive you except as the eternal progenitor of dreams
Your vagina split asymmetrically between the east and the west
I say hush... Hush!
Don't stare... or baby your proud lips gonna expel peals of laughter
into the midst of bandy legged black girls, wet from the harvest, Mama Rose!
Mama Rose, Mama rose...
MAMA ROSE!
Mama Rose: I announce the death of union men, yeah…
and the consummation of flowers, they're gonna be destroyed by the stench of (Gilbert's thoughts?) and the thorny dreams of men
They laid you to rest, and the hill of Piney Grove will never again...
Suffice.

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