You can jive, you can smile, you can sing, you can dance,

but you can’t stand still.

You can have Latin hips and African lips,

but you can’t stand still.

You can run a hundred metres in ten seconds flat,

but you can’t stand still.

Win Gold in the heptathalon, beat drugged-up Olympians

but you can’t stand still.

You can jump, slam dunk, kick a ball, run and score,

prance, star in panto farce, shake your arse and

with your bredren – mash up de dance,

but you can’t stand still.

Because if you stop – stay planted in one spot,

stay rooted,

We have to sit down and listen,

to your opinions:

Reparations, TV representations, Police brutality, Blackface,

The rise of the Far-Right, Foriegn Aid destabalising Africa,

The fact that Stepin Fetchit did what he had to do just to get by.

We can’t do that.

That sounds like  –  a lot of expenditure of energy.

That sounds like  –  a lot of hard work.

 

Dominic JP Nelson-Ashley

from the poetry collection ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK