Now and Then (8 page)

What's the word?

Tell me brother, have you heard

    from Johannesburg?

What's the word?

Sister/woman have you heard

     from Johannesburg?

     They tell me that our brothers over there

     are defyin' the Man.

We don't know for sure because the news we

    get is unreliable, man.

Well I hate it when the blood starts flowin',

but I'm glad to see resistance growin'.

Somebody tell me what's the word?

Tell me brother, have you heard

    from Johannesburg?

They tell me that our brothers over there

    refuse to work in the mines.

    They may not get the news but they need to know

    we're on their side.

Now sometimes distance brings

   misunderstanding,

but deep in my heart I'm demanding:

Somebody tell me what's the word?

Sister/woman have you heard

   'bout Johannesburg?

I know that their strugglin' over there

ain't gonna free me,

but we all need to be strugglin'

if we're gonna be free.

Don't you wanna be free?

Standing in the ruins of another Black man's life,

Or flying through the valley separating day and

   night.

‘I am death,' cried the Vulture. ‘For the people

   of the light.'

Charon brought his raft from the sea that sails

   on souls,

And saw the scavenger departing, taking warm

   hearts to the cold.

He knew the ghetto was the haven for the

   meanest creature ever known.

In a wilderness of heartbreak and a desert of

   despair,

Evil's clarion of justice shrieks a cry of naked

   terror.

Taking babies from their mamas and leaving

   grief beyond compare.

So if you see the Vulture coming, flying circles in

   your mind,

Remember there is no escaping for he will

   follow close behind.

Only promise me a battle, battle for your soul

   and mine.

You will not be able to stay home, brother.

You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop

   out.

You will not be able to lose yourself on scag and

skip out for beer during commercials because

The revolution will not be televised. 

The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you

    by Xerox in four parts without commercial

    interruption.

The revolution will not show you pictures of

    Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by

    John Mitchell, General Abramson and Spiro

    Agnew to eat hog maws confiscated from a

    Harlem sanctuary.

The revolution will not be televised. 

The revolution will not be brought to you by

The Schaeffer Award Theatre and will not star

Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle

    and Julia?

The revolution will not give your mouth sex

    appeal.

The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.

The revolution will not make you look five

    pounds thinner.

The revolution will not be televised, brother. 

There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mae

pushing that shopping cart down the block on

    the dead run

or trying to slide that color tv in a stolen

    ambulance.

NBC will not be able to predict the winner at

    8:32 on reports from twenty-nine districts.

The revolution will not be televised. 

 There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down

    brothers

on the instant replay.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down

    brothers

on the instant replay.

The will be no slow motion or still lifes of Roy

Wilkins strolling through Watts in a red, black

and green liberation jumpsuit that he has been

saving for just the proper occasion. 

Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies and Hooterville

    Junction

will no longer be so damned relevant

and women will not care if Dick finally got down

    with Jane

on
Search for Tomorrow

because black people will be in the streets

    looking for

A Brighter Day
.

The revolution will not be televised. 

There will be no highlights on the
Eleven

   
O'Clock News

and no pictures of hairy armed women

    liberationists

and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.

The theme song will not be written by Jim

    Webb or Francis Scott Key

nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny

    Cash,

Englebert Humperdink or Rare Earth.

The revolution will not be televised. 

The revolution will not be right back after a

message about a white tornado, white lightning

    or white people.

You will not have to worry about a dove in your

    bedroom,

the tiger in your tank or the giant in your toilet

    bowl.

The revolution will not go better with Coke.

The revolution will not fight germs that may

    cause bad breath.

The revolution
will
put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised

                           will not be televised

             not be televised

                    be televised

The revolution will be no re-run, brothers.

The revolution will be LIVE.

(as originally recorded on
Winter In America
) 

This here, this is gonna be a blues number.

But first I want to do a little bit of background on the blues,

Say what it is: 

Like there are six cardinal colors

and colors have always come to signify more

than simply that particular shade

Like ‘RED-NECK'

Or ‘GOT-THE-BLUES'

That's where you apply colors to something else, you know,

To come up with what it is you're tryin' to say. 

There are six cardinal colors –

yellow, red, orange, green, blue and purple.

And there are three thousand shades.

If you take these three thousand shades

and divide them by six,

then you'll come up with five hundred –

meaning there are at least five hundred

shades of the blues. 

For example there is the ‘I ain't got me no money' blues.

There's the ‘I ain't got me no woman' blues.

There's the ‘I ain't got me no money and I ain't got me no

    woman blues',

which is the ‘double blues'. 

And for years it was thought that black people was the only

   ones who could get the blues,

so the blues hadn't come into no international kind of fame.

But lately we had the FRANK RIZZO with the lie detector

   blues;

We had the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT talking

    about the energy crisis blues;

And we gonna dedicate this next poem here to SPEARHEAD X, (Spiro Agnew)

The ex-second-in-command in terms of this country.

And the poem is called H
₂
O gate blues

And if H
₂
O is still water and g-a-t-e is still gate

What we gettin' ready to deal on is

The ‘Watergate Blues' … 

Click! Whirr … Click!

‘I'm sorry, the government you have elected is

    inoperative …

Click! Inoperative!'

Just how blind will America be?

The world is on the edge of its seat

defeat on the horizon, very surprisin'

that we all could see the plot

and claimed that we could not.

Just how blind, America?

Just how blind, Americans?

Just as Viet Nam exploded in the rice

snap, crackle and pop

could not stop people determined to be free.

The shock of a Viet Nam defeat

sent Republican donkeys scurrying down on

    Wall Street

and when the roll was called it was:

Phillips 66 and Pepsi-Cola plastics,

Boeing Dow and Lockheed –

ask them what we're fighting for

and they never mention the economics of war.

Ecological Warfare! Above all else destroy the

   land!

If we can't break the Asian's will

We'll bomb the dykes and starve the man! 

We beg your pardon, America.

We beg your pardon

because the pardon you gave this time

was not yours to give.

They call it due process and some people are

    overdue.

We beg your pardon, America.

Somebody said ‘BrotherMan gon' break a

    window,

gon' steal a hub cap,

gon' smoke a joint and BrotherMan gon' go to

    jail.'

The man who tried to steal America is not in

    jail.

Get caught with a nickel bag, BrotherMan!

Get caught with a nickel bag, SisterLady

on your way to get yo' hair fixed!

You'll do Big Ben and Big Ben is Time.

A man who tried to fix America will not do

    time.

Said they wuz gonna' slap his wrist

and retire him with $850,000.

America was shocked!

America leads the world in shock.

Unfortunately, America doesn't lead the world

in deciphering

the cause of shock.

Eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars they

said and the people protested;

so they said, ‘All right, we'll give him $200,000.'

Everybody said, ‘Okay, that's better.'

I'd like to retire with $200,000 some day.

San Quentin, not San Clemente!

Go directly to jail, Do not pass Go! Do not

    collect $200,000.

We beg your pardon, America

We beg your pardon

because somehow the pardon did not sit

    correctly,

What were the causes for this pardon?

Well, they had phlebitis.

Rats bite us – no pardon in the ghetto.

They said National Security, but do you feel

secure

with the man who tried to steal America

back on the streets again?

And what were the results of this pardon?

We now have Oatmeal Man. 

Anytime you find someone in the middle

Anytime you find someone who is lukewarm

Anytime you find someone

who has been in Congress for twenty-five years

and no one ever heard of him, you've got

    Oatmeal Man.

Oatmeal Man: straddling uncomfortably

yards of barbed wire.

Oatmeal Man: the man who said

you could fit all of his Black friends

in the trunk of his car and still have room

for the Republican elephant.

Oatmeal Man: there was no crime he

    committed.

Oatmeal Man says that, America,

In 1975 your President will

be a 1913 Ford.

Regressive.

Circle up the wagons

to defend

yourself from nuclear attack.

Reminiscent of 1964's Goldwater.

Thank God he didn't win.

But Oatmeal Man didn't win.

I didn't vote for him.

Did you vote for him? 

But that's the first result. And the second would

    be:

The dread Rockefeller. Doubtlessly being

    promoted

for the job he did at Attica?

Forty-three dead and millions of Americans

Once again, in shock!

Doubtlessly being promoted for the job he did

    on the streets

of New York City, where the pushers push

    drugs that the

government allows in the country to further

    suppress the masses

who then do time.

They do life or death or life and death

behind bars.

While William Saxbe wanted to dismiss

the Lorton Furlough Program

and Brother Richard X faces 1,365 years

(did he say one thousand three hundred and

    sixty-five years) for participating at Attica.

Rockefeller faces the Vice-Presidency of this

    country

for his participation.

And all is calm and quiet

along the white sands at San Clemente. 

We beg your pardon, America.

We beg your pardon, once again

because we found that seven out of every

    ten Black men

are behind bars

(and it seems that seven out of every ten men

    behind bars are Black)

seven out of every ten of these Black men

never went to the 9th grade

and hadn't had a hundred dollars for a month

when they went to jail.

So the poor and the ignorant go to jail

while the rich go to San Clemente.

We beg your pardon, America

because we understand much better than we

    understood before.

But we don't want you to take the pardon back.

We want you to issue some more.

Pardon Brother Frank Willis, the Watergate

    security guard.

He was only doing his job (and now he can't

    find one).

Pardon H. Rap Brown, it was only burglary.

Pardon Robert Vesco, it was only embezzlement.

And pardon us while we get sick.

Because they pardoned William Calley:

twenty-two dead and America in shock.

And as we understand all the better, we beg your

    pardon

as unemployment spirals to seven per cent

(and it seems like seventy per cent in my

    neighborhood)

as we watch cattlemen on tv shoot cows in the

    head

and kick them into graves

while millions are starving in the Sahel?

and Honduras and maybe even next door.

We understand all the more deeply

as Boston becomes Birmingham becomes Little

    Rock becomes Selma, becomes Philadelphia,

        Mississippi

becomes yesterday all over again.

We understand and we beg your pardon.

We beg your pardon, America

because we have an understanding of karma:

what goes around comes around.

We beg your pardon, America

because the pardon you gave this time was not

     yours to give.