Note: Real history teaches…even when you don’t want to listen.

When the revolutionaries

Are bored in history class

They will say they

Your mind is wandering:

you are not paying

attention to the lesson

They is being taught

To the that you are being

Inattentive and dismissive

of what is being presented to you.

The information in

front of you

Is for your benefit

They tell you to study

To speak back

to remember and remember

and repeat and remember

and to internalize

for the exam

in front of you.

but when the revolutionary

looks at the information

in front of them,

knowing what they have

been given,

and what is on

the inside of them

remembering that

History is in the other room?

How can anything be saved if all be lost?

When the revolutionary is born

History books self-emulate!

Truth is on the inside of them

It will come from them,

And they will throw their hands

Up in the air —

The same fashion that

we did in Ferguson

When we said,

“Hands up don’t shoot?”

because I do have a question.

I have a question

because what you are

Presenting to me

Is so alien

It might as well

have come from

Jupiter —

Saturn—

Or a bar on Mars.

I do not understand

why all things dictated

in this realm of reality

focused on this narrative

have only been done

by anyone that is White,

And on money!

I do not understand

why my place in this

only is defined by

What my foremothers,

and my ancestors,

and those who suffered

from DRAPETOMANIA

were able to give to you—

that you stole from us—

and that you look at me and

say that I am lazy!

When the revolutionary

Is bored in history class

They will tell your parents

You are inattentive and disrespectful!

They will tell your family

That all is lost with you

because all they you need

To do is pay attention in their class!

Forgetting history is not static —

but is always dynamic,

and we are the result

of such history being erased

and mocked

and—

forgotten.

When the revolution

is born bored

in history class —

when those two meetings

of future and time

converge in

elementary school

middle school

or high school

You just understand

That when truth comes

As James Baldwin says

It must be spoken.

That oracle Baldwin

told us the world is

Held together

Really it is

By the love and passions

Of a few people

And what greater

passion is there

Than truth?

When the revolutionary

Is born in history class:

They will to change it.

-JBHarris, 4.21.2024