Can’t you read the signs?

Can’t you follow instructions?

No crowd surfing.

No being carried along by the music.

No dirty stinking bass.

No Muhammad Ali, Cassius Clay.

No stepping forward,

cutting off the ring and jabbing.

No worshipping of Martin Luther King part 2:

the one fighting poverty,

uniting all colours of working class.

There will be no crowd surfing here.

*

Are you listening?

Are you deaf?

 

Mary Seacole.

Haiti Revolution 1804.

 

Do you hear the festival crowd,

Carnival or battlefield noise?

 

King Musa of Mali 1280 -1337.

The richest man who ever lived.

 

Who gave away so much of what he’d got

He caused a global recession.

 

Are you killing your world with kindness?

Giving away your gift so easy?

 

Charles Drew 1904-1950.

Surgeon developed ways to store plasma

who resigned over blood segregation.

 

Where is your heart?

What is pumping through your veins?

How are you riding?

*

No crowd surfing.

No standing on the shoulder of giants

to get a better view of your apocalypse,

the waves.

Save yourselves.

Women and children last.

*

Why can’t you read

the history books written on your behalf?

Is it because nobody ever taught

the ABCs of you?