How does it feel to walk with the baddest niggas who walked the earth?
Firstly, I'm lucky I'm alive
My children want to know how did I survive
Want a roll call of the bad motherfuckers in my life
How bout Gov. Ronald Reagan
How bout J. Edger Hoover
Interpol
How bout Supreme Captain Raymond Sherriff
did you deal with such
National Secretary John Ali, self-confessed FBI Agent
Elijah Muhmmad, Jr.
Herbert Muhammad, he wasn't bad at all
partied with his sons in Mexico City, Sultan and Elijah Muhammad (Sonny)
Herbert kept me aline in Mexico City
paid me as Foreign Editor of Muhammad Speaks Newspaper
would have stared with some NOI rat haters
I shall not hide the truth while I know
why am I still alive
I say this this
I'm alive only because I thought faster than my comrades who were prepared to
disengage me from the planet earth
after all, my friends were killers, rapists, pimps, paper hangers, counterfeiters
men without fear of the beast
would kill the beast in an instant for the glory of Allah
Mama said I had the worst friends in the world
and she met most of them
I brought them to her house
A wise woman
She said, "Marvin, them niggas ain't nothing! And that Eldridge Cleaver is the worst of them all! Talking bout he saw Jesus in the moon. Son, who believes that?"
Mama wiser than I could ever be
she told me time and time again
"Son, use the mind God gave you and leave them niggas alone!
You don't need them niggas,
them niggas need you!
They just using your mind, Son.
Use the mind God gave you!
And you don't need no wife.
I wouldn't have you for a husband.
You couldn't be no husband of mine.
I tell you and my other kids to irrigate the crops, the vines, lemon trees, orange trees,
you won't do nothing
won't turn on the irrigation pump
ungrateful bastards
yes, I spoiled you
you kids won't even go get the eggs out the chicken coop
don't want to step in the chicken coop
want to buy eggs at Safeway
ungrateful bastards (Mama did not curse, any cursing is my language)
Marvin, I told you to stop letting them girls make noice when you'all out there in
my back house when I'm trying to sleep
tell that girl to stop shouting like that in the night
I don't know what you doing to that girl
but I don't need all that noice I can hear in my bedroom window
put your hand over that girl's mouth do somethin'!
--Marvin X
7/18/20