1i POEM OF THE DAY: I'mma be a stereotype by Crizzie Cree

I’mma be a stereotype

I’mma walk down the street
To my own style and beat and greet
Every person I meet with a smile
I’ll use the charisma my thick hips and lips
Have given me to flip out folks
With my flow
To perform a real show
Aint no one gonna run my mane
Of curl that I unfurl when I wanna have fun
‘Cuz Imma black woman who knows that
Natural is back from
Her fingers to her toes
Don’t have a dime or the time
To spare to help your ego
Grow or to even care
I will quiet down in a town when
On the ballot the choice
Is my voice. Even then, I want
My word heard louder. I will be the
Thunder in the ears of my peers
I’mma be the shake in an earthquake
Making buildings fall
‘cuz I walk tall with my
Head high. My intelligence surpassing the stereotypical sky
Shackles and chains aint
Gonna restrain this spirit!
So let’s hear it!
Give it up!
Live it up!
To the conformist conforming to the conformity of non-conforming
Let those performing know
You are feeling the words of
Their absurd babble
I am using and abusing my wit and tongue.
I aint gonna sit
And wait for no one to say my life
Is a joke
I choke from your suffocating smog.
I aint gonna be treated as your personal hog
I’m not gonna run as you
Pursue what is new and shoot
It down with a gun
I itch when I read of the ditch
My people hid in.
Either die in a tree or somehow
Get free I see that one
Eye twitch as you realize
I Aint Your Bitch.
I will kill your will
To spread my legs and fertilize my eggs
I am a woman: Stronger
I bet the barrel of my gun I longer
Stop me from supporting rainbow
Socks or putting my hair in dreadlocks
Try to step
Up or interrupt my right
To be a stereotype or to fight my war
‘Cuz this is my battle meat
To rattle the stability of your mind
The devil is at our level
He implants words like Superior
Inferior black white brown tan nationality and race
To disguise his true face. You let him
I know begins with 3.14 but what is more
Is its eternity
It will go on forever like my word and shall
Never stop
The DNE because I am absolute
I will root for nothing less than equality
Destiny: yours and mine intertwined
Like a prickly rose vine.
You create the ladder
That divides and provides: my goal
Is to override your robotic system
With my virus
I live in your ghetto. I represent
What’s vile. My people defiled by your legal
Caresses. Arresting our men. College
Entrance barred ‘cuz they in the pen
It does not depend on innocence
Or guilt. Loathing is built
Into our cops’
What’s all the hype about me being a stereotype?
It’s not strange that
I rearrange what is
Defined as my kind. I’ve got the
Knowledge, the unconviental beauty: the
True me.
I’m going to college. I will make a new
Ladder. Break yours! Burn it!
You can’t spell slaughter without laughter
‘Cuz I am the daughter of your oppression
It don’t matter what
I talk like. ‘Cuz I’mma be a stereotype.

written by Crizzie Cree

Join us on Saturday, April 10th, 6-10PM at Catalyst Space, 430 E. 1st Street, in Long Beach to watch Cree and the other youth from Our Word is Our Weapon perform!