My roots 

Have slithered down

Slinked underground

From this Black girl in Seattle 

To the giant

Of Africa

Where the blood runs hot and the sun even hotter

Where mistempered voices voice tempers through cracked lips

Cracked whips 

On their backs

‘Cause they don’t know no other discipline

Pounded yam by the pound

Slipped into soups so spicy 

So exquisite

It would set your senses on 

Fire

Cultivating a culture too divine to despise 

Yet too despicable

To deny

That I 

Am caught up in the middle of this mess

That I

Can see out of the corner of my eye

The distress that it causes 

And yet

I can’t cut free

From this place that’s found its place inside of me

From my mother tongue that tells tales through my mother’s lungs

I’m overcome

By this country i’ve never known

By this country that they call home 

But home

Has never felt so

Strange

So 

Far away

So 

Gone

To me before