> >Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 17:54:35 -0500
> >------- Original Message --------POEM FOR SUNDIATA
> >
> >I remember your smile
> >Bright as the sun's explosion
> >Wide as the arms of Yemaya
> >Deep as a gushing well of kindness
> >I remember your smile
> >
> >Slow like the dawn of recognition
> >Quick like the wit of observation
> >Clear as the logic of common sense
> >I remember your smile
> >
> >Frank as a simple declaration
> >Bold like the taste of naked love
> >Wasn't no grinning or smirking or sneering
> >I remember your smile
> >
> >Even when you were young
> >You had an old smile,
> >deep wrinkles spread across your brow
> >Like worn paths
> >Crossing familiar ground
> >Laugh lines descending from eyes made old
> >By deadly images
> >Laughter holding back the tears
> >I remember your smile
> >
> >Your smile is like an umbilical cord
> >Pulling me back, pulling us back
> >to a lost continent
> >of brown velvet faces with white incandescent teeth
> >radiating home, radiating peace, radiating love
> >
> >Your smile
> >wakes me up from nightmares
> >turned into day-mares
> >Reoccurring slave-mares
> >In the twisted tinsel hell
> >They call amerika
> >
> >
> >
> >When they came and they took my baby
> >When the milk in my breast turned to sour curds
> >When there was no one there to hold me
> >And the voices that tried to console me
> >Sounded like empty words
> >I remembered your smile
> >
> >Wrote off our lives with reams of paper
> >Stained with filthy, greedy lies
> >Turned us into prison statistics
> >Using legaleeze linguistics
> >Regurgitating hypocritical diatribes
> >Like thin white vomit
> >
> >In the midst of body bags
> >And toe tags
> >And the flood of black blood
> >
> >In the midst of affirmative negation
> >And mass extermination
> >I remember your smile
> >We remember your smile
> >We call on your smile
> >We call on your smile
> >To give us light
> >
> >They been trying to take your smile
> >Wipe it off your face
> >Like they be wiping us off this earth
> >But you smiled that smile in cages,
> >Institutionalized outrages
> >Twenty year hits
> >Like contemptuous spit
> >And in spite of a bitter taste
> >in your mouth
> >Your smile shines strong
> >
> >All of us smile lovers
> >Need to set you free
> >We need to free your smile
> >That x-ray smile
> >Beaming rays of freedom
> >Unchain that smile
> >Unchain that smile
> >Set it free
> >
> >We love your smile
> >We need your smile
> >Your smile is sweet enough
> >To melt heard hearts
> >Into love syrup
> >Sweet and sticky
> >as the nectar of freedom
> >We got to free that smile
> >Unchain that smile
> >Let it shine out
> >And warm us
> >I want to see that smile
> >Make children laugh
> >And light up a woman's eyes at midnight
> >We got to free that smile
> >We got to free that smile
> >That freedom smile
> >That freedom smile
> >So we all can smile again
> >
> >Assata Shakur
> >
>