Cliff Notes of a Warrior: Tales of an Intellectual and Spiritual Evolution

By Antonette Jefferson

Cliff Notes of A Warrior: Tales of an Intellectual and Spiritual Evolution is a highly intellectual and daring work that challenges readers to investigate assumptions about race, preconceived notions about what it means to be a
woman or a man and any objective views of history. This book of poetry
excites the mind and ignites the emotions with sharp and vivid images, word play and diverse perspectives. An unapologetic, straightforward and
yet artistic expression, this compilation of poetry is a must read for any
student of revolution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 4, 2008
• ISBN: 9781477177525

Antonette Jefferson

Antonette Jefferson attended The George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC. She has served on the Executive Boards of the American Bar Association, Student Bar Association, and the National Black Law Students Association. Her legal experiences include firm work in banking and commercial law, civil rights law in New York City, and pro bono work for the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project. Ms. Jefferson is also a licensed social worker and doctoral student with four published books.

Book preview

Politics

Firebombs

Firebombs blazing in broad daylight

That’s the modus operandi of rebels

And the picture reverberating in hindsight

Is of Riots, rebellions, revolutions—change

Bouncing off the inner walls of the brain

Elevated off knowledge flames

Cartwheels on wisdom planes

Leading to higher plateaus

Where our understanding is expanded beyond glass

ceiling highs and poverty bound lows

Cyclical visions, reincarnated thoughts

Where mdu ntr gets caught

And informs the new being

Start reading to start seeing

And begin information bleeding

To the masses

Not preaching, just inhaling the vibes of life

Then puffing it out in alice in wonderland circles

That take the blackness of the abyss and transform

them into royal golds and purples

Royal, regal, splendid, superb

Got to be careful not to hit a nerve

With commie liberals

Black Marxist

Feminist narcissist

But never a sleepin narcolipt/ narcoleptic

To be linguistically apropos

The remedy for ambition is psychological sleep

Eat off the fat of the meat of Du Boisian philosophy

Don’t put me in a box, I’m unpredictable

Swim in the snow

Blows off the rooftops and descends to the ground

Where sleeping fools watch the idiot box and gain fat pounds

Fat pockets in the side of the brain

To be ignorant is to be insane

Might as well take a match and propane

And light up the minds of those who have already been slain

By mediocrities crippling pain

Moving through the city like an invisible man

Where native sons get caught up in the devils plan

Wrighting like Richard, bald winds catch up the imagination

Garveyites travel back to the land of origination

X marks the spot where assassinations reign

To kill a revolution is like penicillin to a viral strain

It won’t work and Kings know the deep hurt

Of racism v. peaceful protest—chapter and verse

Quote the Bible, the first shall be last and the last shall be first

Be ready when Jesus leads a Nat Turner rebellion with the black church

Thirsty for the rain that spills from the skies

Where prosperity will make the seeing man blind

Take up the blessing that breaks through old vessels filled with new wine

Getting crippled off the new wealth like scoliosis of the spine

Throwing a line to the fish

Bait em with a poem

Bring em in with a slow kill of intellectual porn

Not sexual references, but conceptually and theoretically born

Insight

Curiosity ignites

the desire to learn

the goal is to get caught in Maat of a psychological storm

that sheds the chains of miseducated norms

Africa

On Being in South Africa

The experience can not be captured in words

There is no word

Active, volatile enough, no adjective descriptive enough to begin to tell the story of South Africa

Our story—people, personalities, passion thrown together

To weather

The journey from ignorance to wisdom

We are the lions who tell the tale of the hunted

Who throw off the chains, don the masks, live beyond the veil

Who scream and yell

At oppression to bring the walls tumbling down as Jericho

Who possess the spirits of the ancestors and letting go

The sand slips through the gaps between the fingers of our brown hands

Returning to the life giving earth of the brown sands

We are Soweto, Kwazulu Natal, Sobukwe, Biko, Mandela

We are alive, the umbrella

Of unity binds us together as one

To Rah-the god of the sun (Sun-god)

To the essence that resounds in the life giving of the tongue

Through words, we’ve spoken into existence meaning

Our bonds extinguish the hate, self-righteous judgment, foolishness that can seep into the very threads of our being

We have elevated our consciousness by way of Mdu-Ntchr

Our notes are the glyphs

We give as a gift

To those who will come next on this journey

Pioneered by the sacred thirteen (13)

Manifesting the vision that in past captivity lived only as a dream

I pledge allegiance

I ain’t pledgin allegiance to no more United States Flags

Till I get my bags stashed with cash

Call it reparations or compensation for the past

Takin my staff

To cast

Pharaoh out of Egypt

Load the clip

Unbury the bodies in the sea

Reman and rewoman the ship

To slip

Past the black whole of Maafa

Swahili key to the father

Speaking in Medu-Netcher, unlocking the abyss

Releasing the secrets of unspoken lips

Bodies gyrating on the tip

Or cape of good hope

Not the pope

I aint taking no religion (praising no god) that came here on a boat

From pagan lands that bare no sun, fruits or caramel sands

Slipped through the hands of sobukwe

To commemorate

A struggle

Wake up the Afrikaners living in a bubble

Bust it (Busted)

Township, no water, some electricity

I’m taking KKK sheets to cover my heat

Join a revolution started by the PAC

So the people can no longer sleep

Paralleling the struggle of the Congress for racial equality and the SNCC

ABCD—the limitations of this language

Taking strict structure and form and abandoning it

For an Amiri Baraka, Lauryn Hill, South African inspired poem

That capitalist want to turn over for a coin,

5 rand

antisystemic movement, the invisible hand

of change

made visible by revolutionaries in a Sharpeville massacre—exchanged

for a holiday

a squalid way of living some may say

the precious indelible stain

of hope, certainty