When I Found Malcolm X Lyrics

Oooooh

I and I

Brooklyn Jersey boy

Big up!

Me give tanks

To Jah Rastafari

Everlasting ever-faithful ever-sure

Yeah mon

Me feelin' irie

'Nuff respect to dreads everywhere

Worldwide

Dis is for Malcolm X

My hero

When I found Malcolm X

When I found Malcolm

Follow me now

I shed tears the way a dam

Bursts wide open when exposed

By an awful hurricane

That moment at age 18

After the first time I

Hungrily ate the words of

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Because I did not

Know a Black man

Like him could even exist

I cried – I cried—hard—because they had

Bowed and arrowed

Bullet after bullet

Into Malcolm the way

Hunters murder

A defenseless lion or deer

He was both a lion and a deer

A lion undaunted by

America's naked jungles

A deer forever thirsty

About what is

Underneath the there

They bamboozled

Us into believing was freedom

Oooooh

When I found Malcolm

Oooooh

Oh when I found Malcolm

Oooooh

When I found Malcolm

Oooooh

Oh when I found Malcolm

I howled like an unwanted ghetto baby

Dumped into the trash bag of history

Because in his book

I was able to hold

And hug my own face

For the very first time

A Black boy ruthlessly damaged

By abuse hate self-hate

Mental illness racism

And that violence

We call poverty

I wailed as we had

Wailed at those

Bluer than blue

Church revivals

As the preacher-man

Like Malcolm's daddy the preacher-man

Made us believe

There was a heaven

For the holes of Black folks

When I found Malcolm X

I said when I found Malcolm X

Malcolm saved my life

Malcolm X the father

I wish I wish I had

Malcolm

When I found Malcolm I found something inside

I went to school like Malcolm

Was the Negro mascot like Malcolm

Made unsafe love to the streets like Malcolm

Was the prison waiting for myself

Like Malcolm

I was there when he

Was re-born, once more and once more

I set that book

Down and rolled and smoked

His speeches

The way I have been

Smoking this joint called life

Since my father told my mother

He ain't my son

When I was eight years old

I puked fresh buckets

Of Ivory soap and muddy waters

Because in this dead

Black man

I had found

God-the holy ghost-and the father

I knew

Would never forsake me

M-M-M-Malcolm

Gave me what

I was missing

He instructed

Me to posterize myself

To be nothing but a man

With a stainless-steel backbone

And legs locked into place

Like Jesus'

On that march

To that cross

When I found Malcolm

I finally found myself

Malcolm X

Damaged bamboozled unwanted

And no one to really help

Poverty stricken and

I could have lost my mind

When I found Malcolm

I found something inside

Oooooh

When I found Malcolm

Oooooh

Oh when I found Malcolm

Oooooh

When I found Malcolm

Oooooh

Oh when I found Malcolm

Oooooh oooooh oooooh oooooh