YOU MAD!?
by Robalu Gibsun

YOU MAD white man’s interstate
paved over your greatgreatgrandpappy’s grave, huh?
Your African ancestors braved
the disease-plagued bowels of a slaveship, for
you to die in the bowels of a project
you still ain’t human, you property, an object
raised on, cartoons and corn syrup, coughing
done played outside too long, when
Whiteman in black van was plotting
your demise pressing the exhaust and
the hood is a gas chamber your people caught in
as the money falling out your family’s wallet
builds more jails to keep your people barred in

YOU MAD, reflecting on back when
them drug boys robbed that delicatessen,
ran back to the block and sold your mama ROBitussin
to rock you back to sleep on nights mama kept fussin
with your father, ‘cause that nigga was too bitch
to be husband, but dog enough to
tuck his tail and get married to hustling,
YOU MAD at your father,
who’d rather raise a gang of drug boys
on the corner who sprout up like roses
to get chopped by choppers and escorted to the coroner
or who slang to suckers like your mother
who dropped you off at your aunt and uncle’s
so you wouldn’t see her on the corner strung out, struggling

YOU MAD at your aunt and uncle, ‘cause the lullabies
they sang couldn’t rock you back to sleep on nights
gun barrels kept cussin, too loud POW POW POW
whole block stop-drop-and rolled to the ground
same way fire hoses baptized niggas in the south
YOU MAD ‘cause now instead of water, innocent
sons and daughters with no armor get sprayed—with bullets
and we all know it was a nigga’s finger who pulled it
and the black boys, doctors forget to diagnose as doomed kids,
harden into niggas who listen to AKKK-KKKKKill a nigga music

YOU MAD but you too broke down to move quick
staring out the window wishing you could scribe a new script
but you sit, watching black boys act in the wrong recital
spirits shifting from life-loving to homicidal
blinded by blood in their eyes that’ll never dry
but when a nigga kill a nigga too close to the one
in his mirror, a nigga realize the genocide that he prescribed to

YOU MAD ‘cause this proves the invisible truth
that niggas spend whole lives zoomed in/side
the belly of beast that consumes them
and when the lifespan of black kids is cut too thin,
niggas begin to believe their melanin is a sin
and confide in bleached Bibles until
brainwashed by slavery’s newest cycle

YOU MAD ‘cause it’s FOOLISH, PSYCHO
homicidal nigga believe the only way to find
God is committing suicide so, he proves it—
Next Sunday revival, they pull his body
from the pool behind the pulpit

BUT WHY YOU SO MAD?
Huh? Why you so mad?
Our revolution ain’t coming
‘til you cut the bullshit,
get up and do shit.