What does history sound like ?

History sounds like 9 months

Like birth of a new life

Like a calm whisper over a cradle

Sweet melody over a tight beat

It don’t mean a thing

If it ain’t got that swing

History sounds like

Ella Like jazz

Even when we’re beaten

Black and bruised

Back bent

Backs barely breathing

History still somehow sounds like the blues

Like Harlem

Like Duke

Like Marcus

Like survival

Like the Hums

Like the clicking of a railroad track

It sounds like old negro spirituals

Celebration in safe houses

Sounds like Harriet Underground maps to freedom

Where freedom ain’t so free

Sounds like 1913

And everything in between

The beats of women marching

We walk with shards on our knuckles

And in between our fists

So keep your glass slipper

Woman not supposed to do no heavy lifting

We belong in the kitchen

In the house

In the senate

In the oval office

History sounds like

Like Michelle

Like Ruth

Like Amanda

Like Shirley

Sometimes history sounds like a silent moving power house

It sounds like the clipping of Jim Crow’s wings

It sounds like Dr. Martin Luther King

Like Booker T Washington

Like the unnoticed heroes we don’t care/ hear about

She sounds like Baker, Clark, Bates

Black women being out of this world but stay behind chalkboards

These figures are still under calculated

History sounds like

The start of new homes

New things

New paths

Like a fresh crunch

Sometimes we forget that we are history

Days we wake up and don’t remember the history that build us

Days where black children forget to listen to music pumping in their veins

History sounds a lot like you

A beautiful black gifted soul

You