To Our Own Beat

These potholes, catch my heels’ heels in ways

that make my knees fold,

and all this,

chanting, jumping up and down,

is making me feel old.

There was a time, when moving, grooving

felt like fairy dusted gold,

but tarmacing and hussling is making wrinkles start to show.

 

There must be more, to these scarred feet,

than fatigue.

So maybe its time, we started dancing,

To our own beat,

To our own beat.

 

They took our songs, and called them heathen,

Looked at souls, and they saw heathens,

So, we changed our lyrics to translated Aramaic

and instead sang;

“Cumbi cumbi, cumbi cumbi cumbi, wa thi

Yesu agitumura kanua akirutana”

and these songs aged too, along with their inherent, inherited structure.

“Na cumbi ungiaga mucamo, niuteagwo”

So maybe its time, that we were singing,

To our own beat,

To our own beat.

 

This traffic is slow, or

hit and run.

The day was slow, but the night is young,

and there’s discount rates for under aged recruits to our denials.

There must be more ways to celebrate independence, than car crash orphaned dependents,

maybe our movements can start depending on where we’re going,

Maybe, we would start knowing,

Where to run, and when to sit,

If we could only move,

To our own beat,

Move to our own beat.

 

Education systems that teach us,

we must follow,

in order to reach past,

everyone else whose following,

strip us,

of the ability, to make it.

There’s not enough space if we’re in the same lane.

The big man says ‘Check Mate!’,

We’re too busy competing to collaborate,

We forgot, that creatives, create.

So we can just let live, and make

Our own beat.

Make our own beat.

 

We silenced our drums, and forgot their names,

so now, they’re so dumb, they’ll never sound the same,

But Egypt and Israel aren’t from whence we came.

Forgetting our history’s forgetting that roots, feed grain

And now, we’re grown ups, not about to shut up.

If all we have is this Jembe we’ll beat with our hearts,

Because the time, has come, when we will drum

To our own beat.

Drum to our own beat.