Assata's Poem for Sundiata 
copyright 1999 Mumia Abu-Jamal  

Sometimes a poem captures the spirit, and reflects the deeper values of life in a way that is missed in the cold flow of prose. The poetic expressions of Black revolutionary-in-exile, Assata Shakur, possess that sweetness, that feeling of revolutionary love, that not even the state's most foul repression can still. In her words, we find word-pictures, crafted in the fires of rebellion, carved in the heart, and expressive of ancient, unchanging truths. Assata, once a captive, and now free, writes in honor of the captive Black revolutionary, Sundiate Acoli, whose birthday of January 9th is hereby marked. Consider this a kind of guest column, written from Cuba's Free America, for a brother who dwells in one of the most unfree places in this world: America's gulags, for a man who fought for Black liberation, and remains in prison only because (like Geronimo) he's "still a revolutionary":  

I remember your smile  
Bright as the sun's explosion  
Wide as the arms of Yemaya  
Deep as a gushing well of kindness  
I remember your smile 

Slow like the dawn of recognition 
Quick like the wit of observation 
Clear as the logic of common sense 
I remember your smile 

Frank as a simple declaration 
Bold like the tase of naked love 
Wasn't no grinning or smirking or sneering 
I remember your smile 

Even when you were young 
You had an old smile 
deep wrinkles spread across your brow like  
worn paths  
Crossing familiar ground  
Laugh lines descending from eyes made old  
By deadly images  
Laughter holding back the tears  
I remember your smile 

Your smile is like an umbilical cord  
Pulling me back, pulling us back  
to a lost continent  
of brown velvet faces with white incandescent teeth  
radiating home, radiating peace, radiating love 

Your smile  
wakes me up from nightmares  
turned into day-mares  
reoccurring slave-mares  
In the twisted tinsel hell 
They call Amerika 

When they came and took my baby 
When the milk in my breast turned to sour curds 
When there was no one there to hold me 
And the voices that tried to console me 
Sounded like empty words 
I remembered your smile 
Wrote off our lives with reams of paper 
Stained with filthy greedy lies 
Turned us into prison statistics 
Using legaleeze linguistics 
Regurgitating hypocritical diatribes 
Like thin white vomit 

In the midst of body bags 
And toe tags 
And the flood of black blood 

In the midst of affirmative negation 
And mass extermination 
I remember your smile 
We remember your smile 
We call on your smile 
We call on your smile 
To give us light 

They been trying to take your smile  
Wipe it off your face  
Like they be wiping us off this earth  
But you smiled that smile in cages,  
Institutionalized outrages  
Twenty year hits  
Like contemptuous spit  
And in spite of a bitter taste 
in your mouth  
Your smile shine strong 

All of us smile lovers 
Need to set you free 
We need to free your smile 
That x-ray smile 
Beaming rays of freedom 
Unchain that smile 
Unchain that smile 
Set it free 

We love your smile  
We need your smile  
Your smile is sweet anough  
To melt hard hearts  
Into love syrup  
Sweet and sticky  
as the nectar of freedom 

We got to free that smile 
Unchain that smile  
Let it shine out  
And warm us  
I want to see that smile  
Make children laugh  
And light up a woman's eyes at midnight  
We got to free that smile  
We got to free that smile  
That freedom smile  
That freedom smile  
So we all can smile again.  

s/ Assata Shakur 

Her words are ringing with a sweet and loving truth. Let us repeat them. More importantly, let us make them into our common reality.