By Any Means Necessary (Happy Birthday Martin Luther King, Jr.)

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mama, I know why the caged bird really sings  
When the mind as an offering hears sovereignty echoed from the mountains let it ring          
From the cradle of birth is to give authority to our mental dreams          
Our deferred aspirations we seek to the highest of our esteem          
How can I learn to fly when my heart cannot even walk          
Animosity, resentment is always found in wagging tongues who doesn’t know how to intellectually talk          
Defacing its own beautiful temple forbidding to asunder such venomously stalk          
Flapping wings, feet planted, in the bitter winds you can hear their self-demise squawk          
        
Mama, will the caged bird’s nest allow the true nature of the conscious to self-reinvest    
I want to be free for the world to hear my quiet songs          
In the comfort of my darkness my melodies of goodwill for me to someday atone          
The hindrance of bars confining me, demolishing the doctrine of my creed, I cannot see the forest from the trees          
Condemning my beliefs in a realm of success, closing my eyes, depravation is surreal, make believe          
I will take one step and then another          
Finding ways to bridge disparity between my Nubian sistas and Moorish brothers    
Many regards given unto hues from any other mother          
        
Mama, is the caged bird the imagination of the mind          
If it remains netted in a private Hell not ordained on God’s time          
Child, you must cherish your pearls and cast away doubts, then pray for the swine          
All I want is my presence to roam, to be free, provide the indignant, the ill-will the core of its universal needs          
A kiss to serenade Mother Earth as I bow to the footsteps who made the journey before me          
Liberation to become my own person          
My heart and soul never to become doomed to the fate to get worsen          
The cage door has been opened, my mind awoken, the tastes of freedom in its victory has spoken          
Bestowing to my generation the last rites of my earthly gift          
From Earth to the Heaven let my commemoration to my past uplift          
        
Mama, does the caged bird learn to finally fly          
Child, I tell you no lies          
You sail through life          
Allotted by the segments of celestial time          
Life, living, and death is measured second by seconds, it welcomes the hardship, glory, as we pray in strife          
It’s all by the Creator’s design who governs the temple          
I am at the door spreading my wings taking flight, the soaring becomes so simple


Power doesn't back up in the face of a smile, or in the face of a threat of some kind of nonviolent loving action. It's not the nature of power to back up in the face of anything but some more power.

Malcolm X