Bickerings

"My heart wants roots.  My mind wants wings.  I cannot bear Their bickerings."

~E.Y.

bone tired.

black existence.

white domination.

infinite delivery systems.

bone tired.

We lived in freedom

We lived in freedom

Before man appeared:

Our world was undisturbed,

One day followed the other joyfully,

Dissent was never heard.

   Then man broke into our forest

   With cunning and beligerence,

   He pursued us

   With greed and envy:

Our freedom vanished.
                                                                     SONG OF THE TURTLE
                                                                     Traditional Ghanian poem

if you can not hear them

“if you can not
hear
them,
ask the ancestors
to
speak louder.
they only whisper
so
as not to frighten you.
they know
they have been convinced
coerced
spooked
out of your skin.”

- connection, nayyirah waheed.

http://feedly.com/k/1fFMnMT

By the time we are 7

"Her writing is everything @nayyirahwaheed" http://feedly.com/k/19flgmr One Blaak Love. ReIdren Business Group. 765-734-3736. reidren.com

Intellectual Warfare (fi Pa Carruthers)

I have a slavemaster in my head

I have a slavemaster in my head

this gringo tells me he controls my fate

this wasichu tells me where I come from

this Charlie(town) tells me he can help it, iNi can’t

when I put him in check

i get absurdly free

violently good

flying go

feeling lit.

& elder respecting

                                    April 25, 2009

When Children Ask

When Children Ask

when children ask

a black

             black

                       black question

   you are removing genuine pain

   you are obstructing body-entering cold

   you are holding up a three-storey-vast coloring book

        for them to color

   you are bending straight the roots of pre-beaten statistics

   you are quieting the best-sellers’ best sellings

   you are tracing the shape of a peaceful craft

        for more than one good hungry folk

in your answer

(so please, have an answer).

                                    September 9, 2009

AmericaValue

#AmericaValue

found two ancestors in my family tree

a slave named America

and a slave named Africa

(no joke)

the slave America the property of one man

was charged with manslaughter

of the other slave Africa the property of another man

he had stabbed him with iron or steel

and struck him in the breast and the head with a stick

its master was heard in its defense

and after 39 lashes

he was discharged

what did America do to get off?

It doesn’t make sense.

                      August 27, 2009

There's A Ray

There’s A Ray

You perform

perform good song

(it is all we can do on this current planet)

Undim, your steady pre is old

but comes out watching, careful

your academy is told you

 by men

whom it is quiety and smally certain

you bear (you’ve born)

I guess I’ve just now to realize

  what an awe

  what a love

the unperformed womban [performance]

All y’alls.

~Livicated to all creatrix.

                                    March 20, 2010

Moika & the Elephant Path

I am moika

I am moika

My good spirit

Can not be stopped

Even when I am sick

And tired

My poetry

My realness

My curiousity

Won’t stop me from

Trying things out

And becoming the leader

My people need me to be.

                        Jan 2010

Warm Manure

Un-American Investigators

The committee's fat,

Smug, almost secure

Co-religionists

Shiver with delight

In warm manure

As those investigated-

Too brave to name a name-

Have pseudonyms revealed

In Gentile game

  Of who,

  Born Jew,

  Is who?

Is not your name lipshitz?

  Yes.

Did you not change it

For subversive purposes?

  No.

For nefarious gain?

  Not so.

Are you sure?

The committee shivers

With delight in

Its warm manure.

~Langston Hughes, The Panther and the Lash

- - - - - - - - -

" 'Your honery'," Simple elsewhere had threatened to testify, if called long as I have been black, I been an American.  Also I was a democrat-but I didn't know Roosevelt was going to die.'  Then I would ask them, 'How come you don't have any Negroes on your Un-American Committee?'  And old Chairman Georgia would say, 'Because that is un-American'."

~Langston Hughes, (Jesse B Simple), Arnold Rampersad, The Life Of Langston Hughes Vol. II,  p217

Purge

Who can purge my heart

    Of the song

    And the sadness?

Who can purge my heart

    But the song

    Of the sadness?

What can purge my heart

    Of the sadness

    Of the song?

Do not speak of sorrow

With dust in her hair,

Or bits of dust in eyes

A chance wind blows there.

The sorrow that I speak of is dusted with despair.

Voice of muted trumpet.

Cold brass in warm air.

Bitter television blurred

By song that shimmers-

   Where?

Langston Hughes, Song for Billy Holiday

Ballad of Pearl May Lee

Ballad of Pearl May Lee

Then off they took you, off to the jail,
A hundred hooting after.
And you should have heard me at my house.
I cut my lungs with my laughter,
Laughter,
Laughter.
I cut my lungs with my laughter.

They dragged you into a dusty cell.
And a rat was in the corner.
And what was I doing? Laughing still.
Though never was a poor gal lorner,
Lorner,
Lorner,
Though never was a poor gal lorner.

The sheriff, he peeped in through the bars,
And (the red old thing) he told you,
“You son of a bitch, you’re going to hell!”
‘Cause you wanted white arms to enfold you,
Enfold you,
Enfold you.
‘Cause you wanted white arms to enfold you.

But you paid for your white arms, Sammy boy,
And you didn’t pay with money.
You paid with your hide and my heart, Sammy boy,
For your taste of pink and white honey,
Honey,
Honey.
For your taste of pink and white honey.

Oh, dig me out of my don’t-despair.
Pull me out of my poor-me.
Get me a garment of red to wear.
You had it coming surely,
Surely,
Surely,
You had it coming surely.

At school, your girls were the bright little girls.
You couldn’t abide dark meat.
Yellow was for to look at,
Black was for the famished to eat.
Yellow was for to look at,
Black for the famished to eat.

You grew up with bright skins on the brain,
And me in your black folks bed.
Often and often you cut me cold,
And often I wished you dead.
Often and often you cut me cold.
Often I wished you dead.

Then a white girl passed you by one day,
And, the vixen, she gave you the wink.
And your stomach got sick and your legs liquefied.
And you thought till you couldn’t think.
You thought,
You thought,
You thought till you couldn’t think.

I fancy you out on the fringe of town,
The moon an owl’s eye minding;
The sweet and thick of the cricket-belled dark,
The fire within you winding…
Winding,
Winding…
The fire within you winding.

Say, she was white like milk, though, wasn’t she?
And her breasts were cups of cream.
In the back of her Buick you drank your fill.
Then she roused you out of your dream.
In the back of her Buick you drank your fill.
Then she roused you out of your dream.

“You raped me, nigger,” she softly said.
(The shame was threading through.)
“You raped me, nigger, and what the hell
Do you think I’m going to do?
What the hell,
What the hell
Do you think I’m going to do?

“I’ll tell every white man in this town.
I’ll tell them all of my sorrow.
You got my body tonight, nigger boy.
I’ll get your body tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
I’ll get your body tomorrow.”

And my glory but Sammy she did! She did!
And they stole you out of the jail.
They wrapped you around a cottonwood tree.
And they laughed when they heard you wail.

And I was laughing, down at my house.
Laughing fit to kill.
You got what you wanted for dinner,
But brother you paid the bill.
Brother,
Brother,
Brother you paid the bill.

You paid for your dinner, Sammy boy,
And you didn’t pay with money.
You paid with your hide and my heart, Sammy boy,
For your taste of pink and white honey,
Honey,
Honey.
For your taste of pink and white honey.

Oh, dig me out of my don’t-despair.
Oh, pull me out of my poor-me.
Oh, get me a garment of red to wear.
You had it coming surely.
Surely.
Surely.
You had it coming surely.

~Gwendolyn Brooks, A Street in Bronzeville (1945)

Go Slow

Go Slow, they say-
While the bite
Of the dog is fast.
Go slow, I hear-
While they tell me
You can't eat here!
You can't live here!
You can't work here!
Don't demonstrate!  Wait
While they lock the gate. . . .
~Langston Hughes, "Go Slow," c1960

put my foot in it

For Sure

For sure I’ll get fed up

without even waiting

for things to ripen

like a good camembert

So until then I’ll just go

and put my foot in it

or grab by the collar

everything I can’t stand

In capital letters:

colonization

civilization

assimilation

and all that

Meanwhile

you’ll often hear me

slam the door

~from Pigments by Léon-Gontran Damas, translated by Franklin Rosemont 

"... i grieve for our gone."

When one cannot influence a situation it is an act of wisdom to withdraw*
   Every Black woman in america has survived several lifetimes of hatred, where even in the candy store cases of our childhood, little brown niggerbaby candies testified against us.  We survived the wind-driven spittle on our child's shoe and pink flesh-colored bandaids, attempted rapes on rooftops and the prodding fingers of the super's boy, seeing our girlfriends blown to bits in Sunday School, and we absorbed that loathing as a natural state.  We had to metabolize such hatred that our cells have learned to live upon it because we had to, or die of it.  Old King Mithridates learned to eat arsenic bit by bit and so outwitted his poisoners, but I'd have hated to kiss him upon his lips!  Now we deny such hatred ever existed because we have learned to neutralize it through ourselves, and the catabolic process throws of waste products of fury even when we love.
         I see hatred 
         I am bathed in it, drowning in it
         since almost the beginning of my life
         it has been the air I breathe
         the food i eat, the content of my perceptions;
         the single most constant fact of my existence
         is their hatred . . . 
         I am too young for my history**
   It is not that Black Women shed each other's psychic blood so easily, but that we have ourselves bled so often, the pain of bloodshed becomes almost commonplace.  If i have learned to eat my own flesh in the forest - starving, keening, learning the lesson of the she-wolf who chews off her own paw to leave the trap behind - if i must drink my own blood, thirsting, why should I stop at yours until your dear dead arms hang like withered garlands upon my breast and i weep for your going, oh, my sister, I greive for our gone.
~From Eye to Eye: Black women, Hatred, and Anger by Audre Lorde

*From The I Ching.
**From "Nigger" by Judy Dothard Simmons in Decent Intentions

Flight (for May Ayim r.i.p.p.)

Christ have mercy on all sleeping things!
From that dog rotting down Wrightson Road
to when i was a dog on these streets;
if loving these islands must be my load,
out of corruption my soul takes wings,
But they had started to poison my soul
with their big house, big car, big-time bohbohl,
coolie, nigger, Syrian, and French Creole,
so I leave it for them and their carnival --
I taking a sea-bath, I gone down the road.
I know these islands from Monos to Nassau,
a rusty head sailor with sea-green eyes
that they nickname Shabine, the patois for
any red nigger, and I, Shabine, saw
when these slums of empire was paradise.
I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation.

~Derek Walcott (1984), The Schooner "Flight" -excerpt
(fist tap la)

Still Here

Still Here

I've been scarred and battered.

My hopes the wind done scattered.

Snow has friz me, sun has baked me.

     Looks like between 'em

     They done tried to make me

Stop laughing, stop loving, stop living-

     But I don't care!

     I'm still here!

~Langston Hughes

If you want to know

If you want to know who I am
I am daughter of Angola, of Keto and Nago
I don't fear blows because I am a warrior
Inside of samba I was born
I raised myself, I transformed myself, and
no one will lower my banner, O, O , O,
I am a warrior woman daughter of Ogun and Yansa
-Clara Nunes

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

  "Let the blare of Negro Jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing Blues penetrate the closed ears of the colored near-intellectuals until they listen and perhaps understand.  Let Paul Robeson singing "Water Boy" and Rudolph Fisher writing about the streets of Harlem, and Jean Toomer holding the heart of Georgia in his hands, and Aaron Douglas drawing strange black fantasies cause the smug Negro middle class to turn from their white, respectable, ordinary books and papers to catch a glimmer of their own beauty.  We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.  If white people are pleased we are glad.  If they are not, it doesn't matter.  We know we are beautiful.  And ugly too.  The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs.  If colored people are pleased we are glad.  If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either.  We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves."

~Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain