[Verse 1] In the wake of history's tide Where the ship has left its mark Christina shows us how we ride Through the waters cold and dark The past ain't past, it lives today In every breath and every wave The middle passage finds its way Into the present we can't save [Chorus] Wake work, wake work Living in the aftermath Anti-blackness does its work Cutting futures from our path Wake work, wake work Time ain't linear anymore When the violence still does lurk In the waters we explore [Verse 2] Sylvia speaks of being human How that word got defined Left some people out of viewing Drew the borders of mankind Coloniality of being Says who counts and who don't matter New ways of knowing and seeing Break the old world's chains and chatter [Chorus] Wake work, wake work Living in the aftermath Anti-blackness does its work Cutting futures from our path Wake work, wake work Time ain't linear anymore When the violence still does lurk In the waters we explore [Bridge] Rasheedah brings the quantum view Time moves in spirals, not straight lines Black quantum futurism breaks through The illusion that the past declines Space-time bends around our pain But also bends around our power We can break the temporal chain And claim our future in this hour [Verse 3] The ship keeps on reproducing Death and life all mixed in one Its machinery's still producing What it started, never done But in the wake we find resistance Ways to breathe beneath the foam Building futures from ouristence Making possibility home [Final Chorus] Wake work, wake work Living in the aftermath But we're breaking violence's work Creating our own future path Wake work, wake work Time spirals back and forward too In the wake we do the work Of making something wholly new [Outro] In the wake we learn to swim In the wake we learn to fly The future's not so dim When we see with quantum eyes
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