Malcolm X

Malcolm X

Born Malcolm Little in Omaha in 1925
You were forced to flee
white supremicists twice
before the age of five

Your fearless father was murdered and
Your mother then went insane
Eight children then got fostered out
But no one got the blame

You wanted to be a lawyer and you
Graduated the top of your class
But your racist ignorant teacher
Was much worse than a pain in the ass

So you drifted into crime in Harlems’
Tough mean neighbourhoods
Running numbers ,narcotics,prostitution
The main leader of the hoods

You got ten years with your buddy
Malcolm “ Shorty “ Jarvis
Serving seven in reality on
A host of burglary charges

While doin time for all these crimes
You had a religious conversion
Accepting Elijah’s Muhammeds' teaching
And the Nation of Islams’ version

Of analysis and enpowerment of Afro-American blacks
While the long feared “Black Messiah”
then crisscrossed the States
Buiding the NOI


Brilliant oratorical skills
and many wise insights
Then brought the activities of the State
And an agenda of a shortened life

Then the test of faith arrives
Elijah is no living prophet
Affairs and children everwhere
And warm comfort from good profit

You broke with the Nation Of Islam
And founded the Muslim Mosque
Returning from Mecca in 64
Preaching unity to beat the boss

But this new message of unity
Made you a bigger threat than ever
The NOI then moved against you
And the State was boxing clever

Slaughtered in the Audobon ballroom
in the year 1965
A second man is caught by the crowd
But he was never ever tried

Laid to rest in Fernhill cemetry
A martyred “Black Messiah”
The powerful just could not let you live
And feared your love and fire

Peter Burton September 2006


Dignity is everywhere

Shabby ,run down, crowded ghettoes
poverty lurking from tenement ends
paint-peeled windows
bare-bulb shadows
decorate the cold drab struggle
anger bitterness envy resentment
fuel the drug ridden
alcohol buildings

Yet people live there just
as in all Ghettos
with honesty and self-respect.

Peter Burton September 2006