Comment #1 – Gil Scott-Heron

Poem here says
Comment number one
Uh, comment number 2 was dynamite
But comment number one was the one that we decided to, to use here this evening
Because it makes a, a comment, if you listen closely
On what is now being advertised in East Harlem as the rainbow conspiracy
A combination of the Students For A Democratic Society
The Black Panthers, and the Young Lords
And this is my particular comment about that conspiracy
Comment number one

The time is in the street you know
Us living as we do, upside down
And the new word to have is revolution
People don’t even want to hear the preacher spill or spiel
Because God’s hole card has been thoroughly piqued
And America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey

The youngsters who were programmed to continue fucking up woke up one night
Digging Paul Revere and Nat Turner as the good guys
America stripped for bed and we had not all yet closed our eyes
The signs of truth were tattooed across our often entered vagina
We learned, to our amazement, the untold tale of scandal
Two long centuries buried in a musty vault
Hosed down daily with a gagging perfume

America was a bastard
The illegitimate daughter of the mother country
Whose legs were then spread around the world
And a rapist known as freedom
Free doom
Democracy, liberty, and justice were revolutionary code names that preceded
The bubbling, bubbling, bubbling, bubbling, bubbling
In the mother country’s crotch
And behold a baby girl was born
Nurtured by slave holders and whitey racists
It grew and grew and grew
Screwing indiscriminately, like mother, like daughter
Everything unplagued by her madame mother

The present mocks us, good black people with keen memories
Set fire to the bastards who ask us in a whisper
To melt and integrate
Young, very young, teeny bopping revolt on weekend young
Dig by proxy what a mental ass kicking they receive
Through institutionalized everything and vomit up slogans to stay out of Vietnam
They seek to hide their relationship with the world’s prostitute
Alienating themselves from everything except dirt and money
With long hair, grime, and dope
To camo-hide the things that cannot be hidden
They become runaway children
To walk the streets downtown with everyday black people
Sitting on the curb crying
Because we know that they will go back home with a clear conscience and a college degree

The irony of it all, of course
Is when a pale face SDS motherfucker dares look hurt
When I tell him to go find his own revolution
He wonders why I tell him that America’s revolution will not be the melting pot
But the toilet bowl
He is fighting for legalized smoke or lower voting age
Less lip from his generation gap and fucking in the street
Where is my parallel to that?
All I want is a good home and a wife
And her children and some food to feed them every night

Back goes pale face to basics
Does Little Orphan Annie have a natural?
Do Sluggos kings make him a refugee from Mandingo?
What does Webster say about soul?
I say you, silly trite motherfucker
Your great-grandfather tied a ball and chain to my balls
And bounced me through a cotton field
While I lived in an unflushable toilet bowl
And now you want me to help you overthrow what?
The only truth that can be delivered to a four year revolutionary
With a hole card i.e. skin is this

Fuck up what you can
In the name of Piggy Wallace, Dickless Nixon, and Spiro Agnew
Leave brother Cleaver and Brother Malcolm alone please
After all is said and done
Build a new route to China if they’ll have you

Who will survive in America?
Who will survive in America?
Who will survive in America?
Who will survive in America?