West Virginia University

Urban Word Poets

Where is MY Flag? (for Megan Williams)

By: Rheadrea Monet

?Oh say can you see??
How unjustly we?re treated
By a country that seems
Superpowers supreme
But a secret it keeps
One so dark and so deep
That if it was ever leaked
Other nations would scream
HIPOCRACY
While our nation promotes democracy
Seemingly

As screams of ?Black Power? ring through the air
I could never be more glad
More proud that I was there
Calling upon my ancestors
Coretta Scott and Dr. King
Malcolm X and Harriet Tubman
They all did the same thing
Marching for our rights
We have no choice
We have to fight
I may even start listing it as my occupation
Because being an activist is a full-time job
With no vacations
I?m so proud that I can stand hand-in-hand
With my brothers, my sisters, my friends
As we start the march, signs wave in the air
Calling for justice, but is anyone there?
We say stop the violence and give us peace
While they look at us as if we?re freaks

??By the dawn?s early light, what so??
Proudly we hailed? I?m not proud.
Proud of a nation bent of holding us down.
Proud of forefathers who didn?t mean me
When they said WE the people
Proud of a nation that doesn?t consider me as equal.
Don?t get me wrong, I love the US of A
But we continually have conflicting actions
When we preach another thing

??At the twilight?s last gleaming??
Wait.
At twilight?s last gleaming?
My light?s still beaming
Like a flood light or a flashlight
My eyes are still open, I?m still seeing
The injustice and segregation,
The rape of our people, the degradation
And a nation built on a rocky foundation

?...Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight??
Our fight wasn?t just dangerous, it was devistating
Fighting over resources that it wasn?t our job to claim
Counting men?s lives, hoping they?re cat-like
Now recruit another thousand, send them to bootcamp in Iraq overnight
We shouldn?t have even been there, but that?s another story
Killing men in other countries to attain daddy?s love and historical glory

So the rest of the song talks about ramparts we watched,
Rockets? red glare and bombs bursting in air
With proof through the night that our flag was still there
And although our flag was present, where was our President?
The towers fell, Katrina hit, and we were left to represent?ourselves
Our secret was nearly revealed, one Kanye West nearly spilled
It?s not just Bush who doesn?t care about black people
That?s why we?re left alone to rebuild,
A great city, a cultural center filled with music, food, and until
We recognize the signs of a country?s divide
We?ll be unparalleled in our strife and still crying for the life
That was lost in the waves, where racial walls stand strong,
But the levees break

“Oh say, does that star spangled banner yet wave
Over the land of the free, and the home of the brave?”
And brave we must be for continuing to stay
In a land filled with inhabitants who claimed it was they
Who own the land, and discovered it first
Not really seeking to find it, the Colombus curse,
Where others still claim our culture as their own
Where we either gave up our native language
Or were whipped to the bone
Where we practiced martial arts, but made it look like dance
Where we sang songs to let others know the plan
Where we gave birth to this great nation
We built it, we suffered it, and some of us still can?t take cruise vacations
Where we are still oppressed and our checks make us depressed
Where they medicate our children and teach them lies
Where they turned us against one another and smile every time another one of us dies
Where our women were raped and tortured, became sex slaves
Where our men occupy prison from birth to their grave
Yes, land of the free and home of the brave
More like land of the white man and home of the slaves.