By Button Poetry
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Omar Holmon, performing at Camp Bar in Saint Paul, MN.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
– At an open casting call for background hobbits,
00:04
in the movie, The Hobbit.
00:06
An Indian woman showed up and was told,
00:09
“no, you can’t be in this movie,
00:13
because you’re too brown to be a hobbit.”
00:16
From comedian Wyatt Cenac.
00:20
Meanwhile in middle earth, me and my niggas
00:23
tying bandanas around the horns of our unicorns.
00:26
There’s a horde of macro aggressors heading towards us.
00:29
And we ready to ride out,
00:30
because I’ll be God damned if they gentrify our homeland.
00:33
That plus 999 phantom armor on my chest
00:36
dripping candy paint.
00:37
Got this shit looking like black death excellence.
00:40
Got this shit looking like what dragon gonna smite me?
00:43
I’m thinking no white privilege conjured against me
00:46
shall prosper, but if it does, they’ll have to roll the die
00:51
with a steel piece at my side.
00:52
An obsidian blade on my hip called perfect dark.
00:55
Given to me by the Lady ‘Yonce of the lake.
00:58
She said it’s dangerous to go
01:00
and be black boy alone, take this.
01:02
Right before she black girl magic-ed a sword,
01:05
a pink blackness onto the kid.
01:07
When it leaves the sheath all you hear is, awe shit.
01:12
With each swing in battle you can hear it sing the names
01:15
of all my lost kin.
01:16
Sounds like thousands of black bodies
01:18
calling for the blood of whatever false god
01:21
these sorcerers of love and light
01:23
scapegoat their actions behind.
01:24
Whatever false god deemed white magic the privilege
01:27
to the right of being right.
01:29
You guys are concerned a little bit,
01:30
this is not a call for the race war or anything like that.
01:33
Like, just a poem, World of Warcraft style,
01:35
like, you’re safe here, it’s okay, it’s okay America.
01:45
The readers of this should know,
01:46
this is totally a metaphor for the race wars,
01:49
that is in fact coming!
01:57
And I roll with a squad of south side sages
02:00
that rock their wizard hats, cocked to the side
02:02
like 50 caps.
02:03
Elder scrolls taped across the waist,
02:05
spells tatted on they neck,
02:08
down for a fly by riding on a gryffin
02:11
with that rose wood wood wand locked and loaded
02:14
with a banana clip full of manna
02:15
in the chamber shoutin south side Hufflepuff till I die.
02:24
We products of our environment.
02:26
None of us sure we live to see 21,
02:28
thousand years of age.
02:31
I buried a brother in arms last night,
02:33
her body a pine box wrapped gift back to the earth.
02:36
Her spear still chest deep through a cyclops
02:39
that bit off more than he could fuck with
02:41
but that shit, that won’t make the front page
02:43
of your local fiction novel,
02:44
because they want to say we don’t belong here.
02:48
As if we didn’t exist in this time.
02:51
As if we ain’t from the same Middle Earth.
02:53
Where my mothers mother fought dire wolves,
02:56
giants, and kings drunk off their own manifest destiny
02:59
to keep this piece of earth and her family
03:01
for five millenia’s so I’ll be damned if we give home up.
03:05
Be damned if our banner comes down.
03:07
Be damned if I come back on my shield without a fistful
03:10
of crowns to show for it.
03:11
Because once we’re done with this hoard,
03:13
the Lord that reigns gonna run the jewels.
03:16
And they’ll probably send some systemic oppressions,
03:20
but we’ll still be here.
03:22
On our piece of earth, from the same Middle Earth,
03:27
drunk off our own divinity.
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video