For Mumia on his birthday

By Julia Wright

To yet another Mumia generation:

Children, did you hear

of a Black man called Mumia ?

for 40 years he has been taking us on a journey

showing us the cruel and unusual imprisonment

of a world shackled by made-in-U.S.A. imperialism − 

the poisoning of the earth belonging to the damned,

the hunger and the drought

suffered by the underneath of the underneath

at the hands of climate-blind corporate greed,

the political incarceration of those who dare lift their voice

against their own genocide . . .

for forty years Mumia has been taking us on a journey

inside ourselves telling us

that Blackness has its shadows

that the Movement has its ebbing tides

that we live in the prison of our imagined freedom

for forty years Mumia has been our Teacher 

gently letting us know

that our Black Love

will break us out of all prisons

for forty years

Mumia has been captive of their prison

and free in his mind