Maria C. James

We Can’t Fill Your Shoes
Tribute to Nikki Giovanni

We may be walking in your footsteps but
We can’t fill your shoes
We can’t fill your shoes
We can’t fill your shoes.
The Gen X revolution is televised
Pens hit page and mouths spit conscious rhymes,
but before I bless the mic this time
I must pay homage to you,
The true
Revolutionary poet
Your boldness, liberation to Black voices
Your achievements, the fulfillment of once
enslaved dreams
Knowledge is power
And it pours from your pen
Its libation;
Its golden;
Its red, black, green;
Yes, poet, you can kidnap me
Kidnapping
You’re kidnapping ignorance from young minds sold out for the “bling.”
You said, ‘Black love is Black wealth’ so
roll in it Black woman.
We love you for teaching us to love ourselves,
Suddenly
we
Be living naturally
‘cuz you spoke of Revolutionary Dreams
And if you find yourself ego trippin’
you still get mad respect
‘Cuz sis you’re so baaaad
Even your errors are correct.
GenXers write poems
read poems
speak poems
preach poems
in this spoken word revolution but
we must pay homage to you my sister
‘Cuz we may be walking in your footsteps but we can’t
fill your shoes
We can’t fill your shoes
We can’t fill your shoes.

POEM.

I am a poem.
I get in your face and rub the sleep from your eyes
I’ve got nappy roots that can’t be altered
I burn like perm, leaving footprints on your psyche.
Im a chemically induced trip down memory lane,
a zealot’s holy jig,
a lucid flashback.
I sail like clouded mindsets,
surfing across watered down convictions,
twirling like a dancer on the tip of your tongue.
I got stuck in your throat as you choked on my
negative connotation
seeping into the cracks in your mind
filling in gaps
I tap that ass-
piration
Im a mental enema for your emotional constipation;
I bring illumination to your contemplation;
with verbal hands I fondle your private brain cells
making you confess the process of impure thoughts as your nature swells to the sound of my
acrostic acrobatics.
Im that blue pill for your soul
sending your mind into a frenzy until
your logic relaxes and collapses in the presence of me.
Sublime.
From title’s end to finish line I am a poem.