In the lights of the Harvest Moon, devilish cowards ride deep into the night in search of the Negros' Souls to satisfy their darkest plights. The dark of night conceals their advances, dark intent covers their hearts for they come to pluck me from this wretched life. To string me dry on that red oak Tree where they hung all my kins to die for the crime of being black. I stand my grounds as I guard their hallow tombs, for these devilish men have no sense of humanity to be found. 50 Devils swarms to my feet bringing forth a Hellish treat, "I'm ready, come for me, you peckerwoods, you Night Riders."
I uttered silently, "oh momma I shall go quietly", as these "peckerwoods" marches me across the green pastures, beneath that old red oak Tree near our home. They lasso the noose above my favorite Tree, the one I fell when I tried to climbed, you picked me up, "oh momma I shall show no fear nor show my tears". As they position my body beneath the noose at the very spot where they hung you many moons ago, "oh momma I've missed you so." I swore to y'all vengeance would smile upon your souls, "oh momma", I silenced me one of the "peckerwood" that lynched you, papa and my seven siblings.
He jumped from his horse and looked me in my mind as I stood there so valiantly. His bloodstained hands strung the musky rope around my neck, rubbing tightly on my skin as they jerked the rope up against my chin. My heartbeat throbbing through my veins as it pounced against the lints on the noose like tiny needles poking into me. They strangle the ropes into my flesh until it became my entity. My legs went out from under me as I quickly gasp for my final breath.
"Oh momma" I am but one breath away from thee, "please be there for me when I pass to the yonder side."
I'm still dangling here on that red oak Tree where we had our first picnic. I'll wear my vengeance smile til my lights go out, "these peckerwoods won't get a whimper out of me"! This body of mines is slowly turning into my corpse as it sways back and forth within the winds of atrocity. I looked at him "dead in the eyes" then I gave to him my vengeance smile. The red oak Tree bears witness to my final breath, to my death as my consciousness slowly fades into the dark unrest. I see my mother's face as the lights draws forth to me from that dark abyss.
I would if I could do it all over again, even knowing it would lead me to the end of this rope, to this very moment of lamentations. I gladly give my vengeance smiles to these "peckerwoods", for I am my mother's advocate.
I am the ghost of David Walker Jr.
100 years have come to past
where are you my advocates
my body strung and hung up to dry
on that noose where my momma died
,where my papa died
,where my seven siblings died
,and where I died
Our names are not even ours
Where is our identity
The ropes and trees are our identities
Where is my Lord and God
Our religions are not even ours
The scars in our hearts, the noose around our necks those are ours...
Our advocates shot or hung
by our masters' rotten sons
Yet we bear our master's name
but share not in the master's shame
These "peckerwoods" building their nests on the Trees where the Negros hung.
The haunted big oak Tree with ropes draped around the branch reminds him of his ancestors, as it screams out their pains. In the howling winds you can hear the branches "crackle" like necks snapping from the weight of a dangling corpse. The ropes and trees are forever the Negros identity as violence becomes his ever lasting cultural atrocities.
Rings around the branches where the nooses hung
Rings around the branches where the Negros hung
lynch a Negro as they smile and had their fun
shoot a Negro as they smile and use their gun
The embellishments of the Negros' atrocities becomes his solemn identity. He is but a mere shell with nothing inside, emptied of identity, emptied of culture, sucked dried from the inside out and filled by everything that does not belong to him. He longs for a past that does not embrace him nor remembers him while living in the present that does not fully acknowledge him and a future that cannot assure him of the long overdue reparations he seeks, that should have been given long ago.
Oh, Negros what is thy names? What winds have carry thee to these forsaken shores? Does your names echo in the winds or are they buried deep within?
Your spirits trenched inside those hallow gravesites that you parade by each day to and from your modern day cotton fields...to and from your prisons your modern day shackles. When you look inside the Wypipo's prisons your sons and daughters shackled again by the chains of oppressions as you both stare back at each other's reflections.
What is left, when his originality has been stripped and replaced by...
I was the son of David Walker...
