We Don’t Stand A Chinaman’s Chance Unless
We Create A Revolution
(“There’s A New World Coming”)
To Fred Ho & Everyone In The World
Who Are Not Afraid Of The Future
Chance, like the lottery, is dependent on the universe
What the conditions of the competition are
How many of us competing and who’s pullin’ the numbers
Look at the world, my people, where we draw our borders
Determines who we are, defines our social status as a people
If we stop at the Atlantic & Pacific
We could just dumbly call all ourselves Americans
If we start at Canada
Then for certain we are deep in the South,
Down below the real Mason-Dixon line
If we start at Mexico & work our way north
Then most of us are just
Non-spanish speaking, dark-skinned gringos
But if we go back into ourselves, into our souls
Our history and the reality of our befores
Then there is something greater than geography
That defines us
I am a political creature
Praxis, ideology put into practice
Defines a major part of me
I am also an individual particle of my people
My roots, blood and genealogy
Defines another part of me
But more than politics and biology combined
I am a human being, a creature defined
By the character and quality of my social
Relationships
Who I am, is very much
The way I relate to people, both my race & others
Is whether I lie about my realities
Or struggle to tell the truth
Is whether I want to get over by bullshiting
Or want to develop by facing & changing my reality
So what is a lie versus
What is the truth?
A lie is when we knowingly say the opposite of what
We are, were and strive to become
The truth is simply what is
Our problem is not just telling lies
But also being able to recognize lies
We’ve been lied to for so long
Believed lies for so long in the past that
Today we don’t know the truth
How can we honestly know who we are
If we don’t truthfully know who we were
Truth looks strange to us, sounds
Weird, even corny or square, is a foreign language
Certainly painful and discomforting, the truth is
A hard lesson to swallow when we’ve been
Filled up with lies, our bowels blocked by
Government cheese & our arteries hardened
By imbibing consumer prescribed drugs
You don’t know it
But you don’t really know anything
If all you know is what you have been
Taught in school combined with the limited
Education you get from media distortions of world
Realities
If you think dope in our lives is bad now,
That crack houses exemplify moral decay,
That we need to get back to the past
Then what do you think of opium dens
And native Americans besotted by alcohol
Chemical warfare
Is nothing new, especially in this nation of junkies
Where the twin drugs of tobacco & alcohol rule the roost
Consider this a gentle wake up call:
We don’t stand a chinaman’s chance
Of creating a better & more beautiful future
If we don’t make a revolution
You don’t stand a chinaman’s chance
Is what people used to say to define hopelessness
You don’t stand a chinaman’s chance
Used to be a definition of a loser
But after Mao & crew did their do
A chinaman’s chance got so good
That nobody played that number anymore
Regardless of the problems and perplexities
Of China’s current state at least they got a chance,
A future & the whole world recognizes that
What about us, my people
Do we stand a chinaman’s chance,
We, the underdogs in a horse race
The ice cubes trying to stand the heat of hell
The fifth wheel on a tricycle
Buying bus tickets to cross the ocean
Worshippers without a god
We who can’t stand to reign
Will continue to suffer a million to one
Odds of redemption
Unless we create
A revolution
Plant the seed, raise the tree
Dig, we made America into a democracy
Now we must recreate this whole country
Into a multicultural community where all peoples
Can live & be their natural selves
Can live their traditions & carve out a future
Can call on their ancestors & give birth to healthy children
Can learn what they don’t know & teach everything they do
Can honor the earth & respect the sacredness
Of all living beings
There will be no bright future for us
Unless we create & seize control of our lives
Consume no more than we produce &
Produce all we need to consume
Unless we define progress in terms
Of the quality of relationships &
Measure wealth by the status of the poor
No future until we consciously empower women &
Proudly display a healthy respect for diversity
No tomorrows unless we shut down
The hegemony of cave culture & reinstitute social circles,
Bring back the vision of the tepee, the hut &
Other architectural & social structures which avoid
The dominance of the box & straight line
Nothing will grow unless we merge
With the other rather than thinking separate is equal
We can only greet the dawn with smiles
By doing for self & sharing with all
By building marketplaces at the crossroads
Rather than forts on the frontiers
By learning the literature of the world
Rather than imposing a canon of monoculture
A true revolution
Motivated by the force of love
Sustained by the generosity of spirit
Is ultimately victorious not because it conquers
But rather because it endures
Outlasts exploitation & overcomes oppression
A revolution, a revolution
A revolution of the human
Body & soul, mind & consciousness,
A decisive change, after which
Nothing can ever be the same
Change is the external truth
Everything that exists becomes
Something other than what it now is
Some people think that ugly gon last forever
That whites will always rise to the top &
Revolution is impossible, i.e., that is the
Flat earth school of foolish thought
Those same people think
We don’t stand a chinaman’s chance
To create a revolution—you wanna bet
Whether through evolution or
Revolution, things have got to change
We, like all humans, will evolve or die
Regardless of what we think & do
We will either renew ourselves or
Become extinct
There is a new world coming
There will be a revolution
In our lifetime
The only question is where we gon be standing
What we gon be doing
Who we gon be loving
When it comes!
—kalamu ya salaam