i love tha future

i love tha future
i love the idea of the future
i love tha idea of sayin ,wait a minute
let’s make a future, lets make this pretty,
make it good, make it sweet, make it juicy,
make it real, make it, you know something
other than pre-packaged bullshit, i want a future that,
you know is a Peoples future, God loves everybody,
but you know, you could have a bowl on the table and say, sit down have some,
not that you have to audit, or you have to watch your back, to see who is going to take it away from you,
but a open free, up future and i feel that part of loving myself,
part of being myself, is feeling that im women enough, human being enough,
ta, ta, to make that, you know weather its cooking it in my kitchen,
cooking it up on, on ah er a piece of paper , weather its cooking it up on er ah the way,
i, i see things, the way i do things, i believe in loving tha future, loving enough to make it,
and eh ah making it real, i believe in that shit, ok you know its like,
i know i love John Coltrane, i know i love you know, black beans and rice,
i know i love my baby, i know i love my momma, those are concrete loves,
i can expand and say, i love him and People from all places and ah the Planet and that’s abstract love,
but it’s a real love, its universal, its you know something, i’m working on, trying to make stronger,
trying to make bigger, trying to make heavier, you know, umm, but, i think that one of the loves that,
that’s hardest you see, is loving the future, i love tha future, you know,
i wanna understand the past and i’ll work on it constantly trying to understand
and I’ll work on trying to understand tha future, but i don’t wanna bring it you know,
(laughing) i wanna go on, i wanna open up, i wanna free up, i wanna, you know let go,
i wanna say, wait a minute, I want another kind of world here, i wanna be free love,
i don’t want nobody you know, um, you know following me down the street, trying to rape me,
or trying to beat me up, or i don’t wanna you know, to walk down the street and, and, and you look at somebody you
know, hungry, homeless, wait a minute.........

Poem by Assata Shakur