Enough - Gil Scott-Heron

It was not enough that we were bought and brought to

this home as the slave, locked in the bowels of a floating

shithouse, watching those we love eaten away by plauge

and insanity, flesh falling like strips of bark from

a termite-infested tree, bones rotting turning first

to brittle ivory then to resin.

that was not enough.

it was not enough that we were chained to leg irons,

black on black with a piss stained wall forced to heed

nature’s call through and inside of tattered rags that

strained our privates, and evidently years of slavery

did not appease your need to be superior to something

like a crazed lion hung up on being the king of his

corner of the cage, backs bent under the wieght of

being everything and having nothing,

minds too like bomerrangs curving back into themselves

kicked and carved by the face-straining smiles that saved my life.

that was not enough.

somehow i can not believe that it would be enough for

me to melt with you and integrate without the thoughts

of rape and murder.

i cannot conceive of peace on earth

until i have given you a piece of lead or pipe to end

your worthless motherfucking exitence.

imagine your nightmares of my sneaking into a vieled

of satin bedroom and attacking your daughter,

wife and mother at once ripping open their bowels sexually

like a wishbone.

imagine that magnified a million times

when you realize that the blinders have been stripped

from my eyes and I realize that slavery was no smiling

happy-fizzy party.

your ancestors raped my foremothers

and i will not forget.

i will not forget that Yale

or Harvard or Princeton or In-Hell because you are

on my mind.

i see you everytime my woman walks down

the street with her ass on her shoulders.

i see you everytime i look in the mirror and think

about the times that i would pat myself on the back

for not being too black afterall.

i think of you morning, noon and night and i wonder,

«just exactly what in hell is enough?

«everytime i see a rope or gun i remember,

and to top it all of you ain’t through yet.

over fifty you have killed in mississippi since 1963.

that doesn’t even begin to begin all of those you have

maimed, hit and run over, blinded,

poisoned, starved, or castrated.

i hope you do not think that a vote for John Kennedy

took you off my shit-list because in the street there

will only be black and white.

there will be no Democrats,

Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives,

Moderates, or any other of the rest of that shit you

have used to make me forget to hate.

there ain’t no enough.

there ain’t no surrender.

there is only plot and plan,

move and groove, kill.

there is no promise land.

there is only the promise.

the promise is not vowel until we have been nerve gassed,

shot down and murdered, or done some of the same ourselves.

look over your shoulder motherfucker, i am coming.