Analysis of A Poem by Leroi Jones that Some People Will Have to UnderstandThere is an implicit threat in "A Poem That Some People Will Have to Understand" by Leroi Jones . Apparently there is no intimidation. The poem is confessional, even reflective; the theme is that of mutability and change. However, there is something frightening and sinister about Jones1's vision, which he creates through attention to word choice and structure. Jones' warning is immediately evident in the title through his manipulation of words. The phrase "must" has two meanings. On the one hand, “must” is an innocuous statement of the allyship that Jones expects to find among his African American readers: these people “shall” understand the poem because it speaks to their individual, personal lives. On the other hand, there is a more sinister connotation to "must" - the idea that others "must" understand this poem because they will be forced to. Beyond the title, Jones creates a hostile speaker: a man at a crossroads, or rather, at the moment of a decision. However, the structure of the first stanza is direct and conservative, almost prosaic. Jones doesn't give us anything revolutionary here. Instead, he lays the groundwork for this piece with the bleak opening images of “(d)all unwashed eye windows” (1). These eyes are undoubtedly the speaker's, and they have been dimmed and dirtied by his existence as a black man in the post-segregation 1960s. The “industry” he mentions in lines 2 and 3 is both the American machine industry that exploits the less privileged and the industry that “practice(s).” The speaker is a self-proclaimed “smart/colored boy, 12 miles from his home” who practices “no industry” (35). A "... middle of the paper... The promised "phenomenon" has not occurred, and now it is up to him to bring it about with violence. Jones does not allow the speaker to lose any of his charm as he politely invites his "machine gunners ” – the tools of his new industry – to “come forward please” (26). ego and his new profession. Jones employs the dynamics of change for his speaker throughout the poem From aimless wanderer to passionate revolutionary, Jones traces his speaker's path using specific words and structural techniques. Through these elements, we witness the evolution of a new boogeyman - one who is not satisfied with the passivity of his previous spiritual leaders remains a threat - an iron fist in a velvet glove of poetry - and it becomes a poem that we "must" understand, whether we want to or not.