Knowing Me

According to de experts
I’m letting my side down,
Not playing the generation game,
It seems I am too unfrustrated.
I have refused all counselling
I have refused to appear on daytime television
On night-time documentaries,
I’m not longing and yearning.
I don’t have an identity crisis.

As I drive on poetic missions
On roads past midnight,
I am regularly stopped by officers of the law
Who ask me to identify myself.
At that point I always look into the mirror
Point
And politely assure them that
What they see is me.
I don’t have an identity crisis

I have never found the need to workshop dis matter,
Or sit with fellow poets exorcising ghosts
Whilst searching for soulmates.
I don’t wonder what will happen to me
If I don’t eat reggae food or dance to mango tunes,
Or think of myself as a victim of circumstance.

I’m the dark man, black man
With a brown dad, black man
Mommy is a redskin black woman,
She don’t have an identity crisis.

Being black somewhere else
Is just being black everywhere,
I don’t have an identity crisis.
At least once a week I watch television
With my Jamaican hand on my Ethiopian heart
The African heart deep in my Brummie chest
And I chant Aston Villa, Aston Villa, Aston Villa,
Believe me, I know my stuff.
I am not wandering dark into the rootless future
Nor am I going back in time to find somewhere to live
I don’t want to live in a field with blades of grass
That look just like me, near a relic like me
Where thunder is just like me, talking to someone just like me,
I don’t just want to have sex with me, diversity is my pornography,
I want to make politically aware love with the rainbow.
Dig dis
Dis is me.
I don’t have an identity crisis.

I have reached the stage where I can recognise my shadow.
I’m so pleased with myself.
When I’m sunbathing in Wales
I can see myself in India
As clearly as I can see myself in Mexico.
I have now reached the stage
Where I am sick of people asking me if I feel British or West Indian
African or Black, Dark and Lonely, Confused or Patriotic.
The thing is I don’t feel lost,
I didn’t even begin to look for myself until I met a social worker
And a writer looking for a subject,
Dis is not an emergency
I’m as kool as my imagination, I’m, more caring than a foreign policy,
I don’t have an identity crisis.

I don’t need an identity crisis to be creative,
I don’t need an identity crisis to be oppressed.
I need love warriors and free minds wherever they are,
I need go getters and wide awakers for rising and shining
I need to know that I can walk into any temple,
Rave at any rave
Or get the kind of justice that my folk can see is just.
I am not a half poet shivering in the cold
Waiting for a culture shock to warm my long lost drum rhythm,
I am here and now, I am all that Britain is about
I am happening as we speak,
Honestly,
I don’t have an identity crisis

Now try these activities to help you better understand Benjamin's poem:

1. Vocabulary work
2. Ideas and themes
3. Comprehension