January 27, 2021 by ConTextos

America Goddamn

This piece was written during circle in our new program Into A Black Beyond. IABB is a digital reading & writing circle for Black Chicagoans to explore topics relevant to this inflection point in history and to grow and learn together. Click here to learn more.

Naimah is a Black Femme born and raised in Chicago and currently works as a licensed professional counselor, art therapist, and artist. Her clinical work and art practice often explore the intersections of art and mental health, primarily in BIPOC communities. Utilizing art to shift narratives around healing, mental health, and creating spaces where exploration and re-imagination are valued. Most of her visual work is informed by my lived experience as a Black woman, artist, and therapist. She’s had the opportunity to work with a range of people across the lifespan in community, correctional, and nonprofit settings.

America Goddamn

By Naimah Thomas

America Goddam!

I mean every word of it

While America continues to make a show of it

With your pale skin, always devoid of melanin 

America’s gotten bold with it

America’s losing control of it 

Everybody knows it’s America’s undoing goddam

Can’t you see it

Can you feel it

It’s in the air…the virus is in the air

We can’t stand for your treachery under pressure

Under fear that the time is near, to reckon with stories told

Of Black bodies sold

Somebody say a prayer

America’s gotten bold with it

America’s losing control of it 

Everybody knows it’s America’s undoing goddam

This revolution will be televised…it is being televised

The script is being written, yet

Change is on their tales

Eventually they will fail

Blackness coming across every path

America it’s your past…this is your past

Lord have mercy on this land of yours…never quite mine

You will get yours and I will get mine

I belong here…I make this country great…again and again

I belong here…because I don’t belong there

Lord have mercy on this land of yours…never quite mine

Don’t tell me to breath, when your knee is on me

I tell you, I know what is due…to me, cause you lied and said I was free

You keep saying go slow

You keep saying so so

You keep saying keep the hope

You keep saying stay afloat

You keep saying nope nope

Where are you going? Away?

Where are you going? Home?

Stand up, Stand Strong, Stay…

We continue to do our best…we continue to outperform the rest

Stand up, Stand Strong, Stay…

For everybody knows, America’s goddam

Voter lines, suppression crimes, are beyond what is divine.

YOU LIED…

The home of the free…you gotta be kidding me.

YOU LIED…

YOU LIED…

YOU LIED…means I die

I died because you lied

Blackness coming across every path

America it’s your past…this is your past

America goddamn

America goddamn

America goddamn