[Intro] Brown Viking Yeah, yeah-yall [Funky blues music] [Verse 1] [Spoken Word/Poetry] My mother was a white woman, but a woman all the same For years, I never thought much of white women In fact, I didn't think of them much See, in my mind's eye, she was nothing A dusty trophy piece never savoring the bitter flavorings of grief Placed on a Victorian mantel atop a fireplace seldom used Silently worshipped from big house to old slave shack Never knowing abuse, the suffering of blacks And so went my Negro creed Anything without pain has got no need to be freed My mother was a white woman, but a woman all the same [Chorus] Mixed daughter guilt Shame in my brown face denying her a goodbye kiss neighborhood kids might witness and know for sure... There's devil in my blood. Brown Viking Yeah, yeah-yah [Verse 2] [Spoken Word/poetry] When I was a little black girl, ghetto orthodox pumping through my veins She would wait, gift and her hands and smile stretching across the milky skin of her face As animated as my unease The fear of ghetto kids seeing us invading my senses leaving no place for love A touch, a kiss, a mother-daughter's embrace on this her once a week visiting day Would have confirmed the truth of the devil in my blood But to her I was nothing, nothing, nothing less than her sweet black baby girl The jewel of her emerald eye, the manifested promise of a time Passion was as sweet as the wine she drank to numb her Old history, When my missing father, so tall, so fine, so rich in soul, so very black Kissed her gently and darlingly loved her back My mother was a white woman, but a woman all the same [Chorus] Mixed daughter guilt Shame in my brown face denying her a goodbye kiss neighborhood kids might witness and know for sure... There's devil in my blood. Brown Viking Yeah, yeah-yah [Verse 3] [Spoken Word/Poetry] I never saw the pedestal you see crumble beneath her calloused feet Ever heard the taboo drums resounding through the hopeless song she played for every black man she'd meet Buffalo soldier, I am the land of America, come rest your weary feet in me They answered her call one after the next Each bigger, blacker, angrier than the one before They spoke in an ancient tongue she tried to interpret with her body Giving her very best, but still they needed more Pain, grown, bitter with time, spilled like the wine she drank to numb her In a flurry of fists until there was nothing left! Remained three days abandoned and unclaimed How the pain does grow when death is slow The sunlight's glow simmering her unclothed body's vapors Crimson trailing like the dead end road she'd taken from all her open spaces My mother was a white woman, but a woman all the same [Breakdown] Now that I'm ready to love her, accept her and proudly wear her name Where is my mama? Where is Jane Therese? Dead, standing in an unmarked grave [Chorus] Mixed daughter guilt Shame in my brown face denying her a goodbye kiss neighborhood kids might witness and know for sure... There's devil in my blood. Brown Viking Yeah, yeah-yah [Outro] Brown Viking Daughter of the American dust A Queen of Turtle Isle with the devil in my blood [Whispers and echoes] Brown Viking Yeah, yeah-yah
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