Interchange

Origin Stories: Moving from East Oakland to West Oakland

A Black Mother's Story
by Wanda Sabir

I moved from East Oakland to West Oakland to live in an intentional community called Oak Center One Apartments on 16th and Market Street. Diane Traylor was the manager. A single mother herself with two daughters she created a safe communal environment for families to thrive. Our community was a generational salad with flavors from throughout the African Diaspora – Somaliland, Ethiopian, Eritrea, Sudan. Immigrant and indigenous to the land – we all got along. Newly divorced, I wanted to live here so I could have support raising my children and for the next 14 years it was there. Eventually my dad moved into the complex and we—the community, took care of him until he passed.

Paul Cobb lived around the corner on Filbert and 18th and Samuel Fredericks moved to 16th near Market. He opened his last iteration of Samuel’s Gallery here before he too passed. Greg Hodge lived around the corner across from Paul too. I’d see Greg at community meetings, Chinaka, a child then, busy with coloring books and other activities. After the Loma Perita Earthquake the city government and the Port of Oakland was looking to revitalize this area with investment and redevelopment starting with Swan’s Market and eventually moving over to the train station and Clauson School. What happened was Black people were displaced and speculators and investors came in and from the coop in Old Oakland to the condominiums and townhomes in the Bottoms, the residents could not afford to stay.

Mind you, some of these folks had been waiting for shelter since 1989. These were some of the stories we told at the annual event.

The African American Celebration through Poetry spiraled from ashes, literal debris hovering over West Oakland after the greatest earthquake since 1906. There were no visible fires, the bonfire happened a few years later—the demographic insured and seen more worthy of public monies and support. Not so West Oakland residents many residents a part of the under and unhoused caste populating our city streets. The untouchables are not over there, an ocean, a continent away. QR Hand, poet, activist’s birthday fell on Dr. King Day this year, 2021. Revolutionary meets man of peace, we honor QR Hand and A.D.Miller, scholar, writer, poet, who passed a month before QR, at our 31st Anniversary Reading.

This period called the season of peace uses “satyagraha” as a resistance strategy. This strategy becomes the ground Black folks tread in Montgomery for a year to protest separate and unequal accommodations on public transportation. The African American Celebration through Poetry is cut from the same carpet. King has so many disciples here (who marched with King in the Bay when he came-- name a few)

Poets are the vanguard. We craft ships that sail without water. The engine runs on truth

It is spirit that keeps them afloat, gives power to movement engines and serves as compass and anchor.

[Divide into decades—1990-2000; 2000-2010; 2010-2021 (Use flier collages?)

Earthquakes, bridges falling, pandemics, White Terrorism, fire storms. . . ]

West Oakland was a thriving Black community prior to redevelopment or Black removal. Those poison dipped dollars ravaged the area razing the once prosperous Black community with giant economic scissors. All the single-family housing was reduced to rubble. In its place private contractors erected behemoth housing projects like Acorn I and II and the smaller Oak Center I Apartments.

It was while residing at Oak Center (1985-2002) that I enrolled in Holy Names College to complete an undergraduate degree. I was seated in my philosophy class when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck in 1989. My children were in the Student Lounge with a friend. Normally they would have been seated right next to me, but I gave them a break when my friend volunteered to watch them. After the trembling stopped I ran over to the building where they were, and they were fine. We didn’t learn the extent of the damage in West Oakland and San Francisco until we were in the car headed home. It smelled like death. I heard from so many friends who just made it across the Bay Bridge or through the BART tube or off the Cypress Freeway ramp before things collapsed.

The City of Oakland failed West Oakland. Crushed, people who were barely standing never got back on their feet. Affordable housing, already inadequate meant this major displacement just sent people to the streets to sleep under bridges, in parks, BART cars, AC Transit seats and in Amtrak terminals. Our list at Acorn Apartments was too long even if the earthquake gave an applicant priority. I saw a man in 2017 who was just getting housing what 28 years later?! It’s insane.

I was a college student, single parent and a property manager living in subsidized housing then. The people who were hurting the most lived in my neighborhood. I saw them at the office and then later in downtown Oakland with Highland General Hospital bracelets on their wrists. Sick, they had nowhere to go. I’d give the person a few dollars and wish them well.

The African American Celebration through Poetry, started between 1990-1991, was my entree into Oakland politics and advocacy: affordable housing creation, first time home ownership, economic development, career planning, job placement and leadership. I was instrumental in starting the citywide curbside recycling program. I was also on the Alameda County AIDS Advisory Board. I was appointed to the City of Oakland Library Commission, was on the Board of the Friends of the Oakland Public Library and active in CWOR, the Coalition for West Oakland Revitalization. My friend and mentor, Terry Preston, then FOPL Board Chair and Library Commissioner understood the power of position as safeguard against displacement. If I wanted the program to continue, it helped to have a public face. So there I was in a photo in all the Oakland Public Library Buildings. I also started writing for the Oakland Tribune. Paul Cobb’s Good News Column was deeded to me.

The schools in West Oakland, at least the ones nearby were not the kind of schools I wanted my children to attend, so every morning we drove to Berkeley where I was employed as a site director for the Berkeley Albany YMCA Kid's Club. Later, I worked for Berkeley Public Schools as a preschool teacher and teacher's aide. I also worked at the Berkeley/Richmond Jewish Community Center as head teacher and at Richmond Head Start. Before moving to Oak Center, I operated a licensed family daycare. I later submitted a proposal to the management company to open a childcare center on site, but it was declined.

I drove my girls to Berkeley from kindergarten to Middle School, even after I started working just down the street from home at Acorn I Apartments as assistant property manager. Majeedah Rahman's Healthy Baby Project was there then. Yes, I was working for the management company from whom I leased my unit. Funny story, I wrote a letter to the manager about a problem and she showed it to her supervisor and that person said they wanted to hire me. I had no property management skills, but they liked my writing and communication skills, so I took the job. Housing Resources Management (HRM) out of LA was a great company; when it lost its contact with HUD the next company was not overjoyed with my outspokenness and terminated me when I started organizing a union for hourly workers in 1991.

But I get ahead of myself.

I'd wanted to get my undergraduate degree since I left UC Berkeley 20 years earlier. A friend at Richmond HeadStart told me about a weekend college program at Holy Names. I was accepted and started. The Women's Building in San Francisco gave me a scholarship, and I was all set. I had to pick up my kids and take them to school with me during the week, but every other weekend they went to their dad's house. Friday evening I’d have 1 course and Saturday morning and afternoon 2 other classes for the next two years. When school ended, I’d hurry to my car and drive within the legal speed limit home stopping first at the West Oakland Library for something recreational to read. The problem was sometimes the library closed early or never opened at all.

I remember my first class. It was Algebra. The teacher was the daughter of a mathematician. I asked her about this, and she told me she’d grown up speaking this language with her father over breakfast and dinner. It was like breathing. I liked math and had taken algebra multiple times, passed tests and then forgot how to problem solve. My parents did not speak algebra, trig or calculus. When I studied for the CBEST to work in a Juvenile Facility as a teacher years later, the African mathematics professor at Cal State East Bay taught the prep course so that African American students whom he knew as I knew as a child had parents like mine who did not have fluency, could pass the exam. I passed with a high score.

My children were not going to become adults who feared numbers. My daughters are exceptional because with this knowledge I was able to interrupt this academic trend. We went to Expanding Horizons: Careers in Math and Science for Girls workshops at Mills College and Chabot College where my girls sharpened their analytical and technology skills and grew competent and conversant in scientific language and numbers. They took classes at Lawrence Hall of Science and went to science camps. I also enrolled them in carpentry workshops and afterschool art classes. It worked. Both have fluency in math and science and speak this language to their children.

I loved my Holy Names College experience. It was a community of women-centered scholarship I'd imagined yet hadn't found at UC Berkeley. Sister Mary Anderson, Sister Ethel Murray, Dr. Sheila Gibson, Dr. Richard Yee and others faculty, even administrators, nurtured and healed a part of my soul ruptured or maybe the term is fractured when I found myself isolated and alone with two dependent children looking to me for guidance. Recovering from spousal abuse-- a silent destabilizer, and the mind warp such experiences contribute, I was finally safe and my neighbors, especially Imam Abu Qadir Al Amin, Hafsa’s spouse, listened. Later when my girls grew up and the usual tensions erupted between parents and children, Imam Al Amin interceded as did other friends, like my good friend Kheven La Grone.

I am so grateful Hafsa Al Amin invited me to visit her at Oak Center I when she did. It was like a homecoming. Sister Betty was there with Brother Delmont; Brother Abdul Lateef Rahman was there with his wife, Sister Fahima and children. Brother Rasheed Shabazz and Sister Valerie were present too. And then there were the people I came to know like Diane Traylor and her sister Barbara Traylor, singer, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir member, Hafsa's mom, Ms. Arnice and Imam Al Amin’s mom, Ms. Evelyn; Mr. Nathaniel Kilgore, UC Berkeley rhetorician and scholar and his mom; Fred T. Smith, activist and architect and housing advocate.

The irony of this is after founding the West Oakland Revitalization project which kicked into high gear after the great quake of '89, organizers like Fred and I lost our housing in 2000 and for a time were homeless. Fred’s homelessness contributed to his death a few years ago. When Richard Moore a.k.a. Paradise Free Ja Love and I sat down with the then branch librarian at West Oakland, Ms. Delores, perhaps it was a premonition of what was to come that beckoned these ancestral voices, the mighty, now celestial, chorus.

There was a training center for adults with developmental disability where the West Oakland Senior Center now sits. The Second Start Literacy Program under the director of Sister name? was in full swing upstairs in the Multipurpose Center that houses the West Oakland Branch. My regret is that we didn’t know each other and so as programs came and went, we weren’t able to advocate for one another. West Oakland at that time had lots of active elders who could speak for themselves and we welcomed them to participate in the poetry program. The West Oakland community is the older of the African American communities in Oakland-- what is left of it. When Ms. Ester Mabrey (5/25/1920-August 15, 2016), as in “The Grand Lady of Seventh Street”, owner of Ester’s Orbit Room, passed at 90, a tree fell across from the 7th Street BART Station however, it didn’t take anything out with it-- no lamppost, hanging cables or a BART track. Everything had already been scrapped when BART and the Post Office bulldozed the epicenter of Black Commerce—7th Street. We see Ms. Esther’s Orbit Room in Arnold White's "Oaktown" painting.

Part II

As we reflect on the Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry decades later, we honor those departed and living ancestors like Adam David Miller (98), who made his transition Nov. 11, 2020. Of all the alumnus, Adam lived the longest. The eldest living African American Poetry Celebration veterans now are: Avotcja (80s) and Damu Sudi Alii (late 70s). We contemplated our gradual disappearance from the landscape 30 years ago and see that it has come to pass; therefore it is with urgency that we continue to call names.

Then International Black Writers and Artists Local 5 President, Richard Moore (Paradise) knew everyone. At that time Black literary arts: poetry an extension of theatre included music and visual arts. Our program did as well. Organizations like Koncepts Cultural Gallery, visionary Edsel Matthews’s work, “Konceptualizations,” the magazine edited by devorah major, former San Francisco Poet Laureate, exemplified on a national level where we were doing in one community.

I spoke to Ms. Dolores, West Oakland Branch Librarian, about the inexplicable and annoying Saturday closures and what I could do about it. Obviously the library administration didn't realize people in West Oakland read books. Even those persons who failed the civics class yet watched Alex Haley's "Roots" or knew Fred Douglass's story had a clue about the bitter taste such thinking leaves on a collective consciousness. Okay, so Oakland Public Library Administrators were not reading colonial history texts. I am speaking “read” as in displaced Black citizenry that was and is West Oakland, not American history.

We got ready and mounted a counterattack. I knew Baba Richard Moore knew every Black poet from the San Francisco Bay Area to Sacramento and Pittsburg, California, to Little Nairobi or East Palo Alto to Richmond, Vallejo and Stockton. Ms. Delores made the flier and printed them on bright wicked paper – reds and yellows. The three of us sat in the library one afternoon and addressed the invitations; the librarian then took the mail to the post office, and we waited for the big day, Saturday, February 9, 1991.

We were not disappointed. I think the response shook Oakland like an earthquake, a foreshadowing of cyclical wickedness to come: more library closures, staff layoffs, forced retirement.

Well the rest –decades later, is not history, because the City of Oakland planned to balance its budget on the backs of a solvent Library Department once again. The West Oakland Library we’d worked to keep open didn't close completely; its hours were reduced then later restored, yet not without salaries and pensions threatened. Shop stewards like the late “General Christine Saed,” Aṣe, kept the heat on until fair deals were on the table. The story of West Oakland library and this city government is not an unusual one. It is American history post-antebellum reconstruction policy politics. It is as Adam David Miller states in his Ticket to Exile, "a caste system." In this system Black people, African American people, African Descendants of Slaves, those people, are permanent outcasts.

Part III

This reduction in Black presence in the West Oakland community was also reflected in the gradual elimination of African American library staff. It took almost 20 years for the West Oakland library to get another Black branch librarian. Gracie Woodard was our children's librarian with Christine before leaving to supervise Golden Gate Branch. Don Waters, chief library aide, left with her. Veronica Lee came on briefly before she went to the Martin Luther King Jr. Branch. Ms. Lee had been instrumental in establishing the African American Museum and Library, Oakland, archives. AAMLO was a collaboration between the Northern California Center for African American History and Life and Oakland Public Library. Since its establishment, the City of Oakland acting as AAMLO no longer supports community involvement and has not actively worked with trustees in program development since Ms. Ruth Beckford (now an ancestor) started Friends of AAMLO. I am one of the original silenced trustees.

With West Oakland Library on the map early in our programming, administrators downtown didn't dare close our branch to allocate staff elsewhere as in "white foot traffic" parts of Oakland. West Oakland Library even started getting its share of resources. Elihu Harris was the mayor when we started the African American Celebration through Poetry and he came to the library when the Computer Lab opened. This access to technology for elders and youth kept this area of town from receding into a literal dark age.

However, today, the candle flickers as outreach to seniors and the cross-fertilization between the Oakland business owners and residents is not actively cultivated. There are plans for West Oakland but who are at these meetings? What happened to the Mobile Library housed at West Oakland Branch Library which would visit those sites where patrons were unable to get to the branches not accessible to all residents in Oakland? Why is the absence of Black people at these planning sessions normalized?

Black Lives Matter, one of our many themes over the years, is policy not just a philosophical bumper sticker. I am no longer in West Oakland because after working so hard for equity and economic inclusion, my daughter and I were evicted while TaSin was in her first semester at then California College of Arts and Crafts. The new manager at Oak Center One didn't like me or Fred T., so instead of doing a recertification and adjusting my rent per the lease agreement, she changed the locks.

When I flipped my hand, I had no trump card. All the officials I called— from the council member for District 3 to housing advocates and developers, nothing. My younger daughter and I couch surfed almost a year while I taught at Laney and Contra Costa Colleges.

Part IV

The demographics changed in West Oakland, yet every first Saturday in February for 30 years, we rallied and without fail hosted the African American Celebration through Poetry. When MaryGay Dulcy came on as Branch Librarian the program name changed to “A Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry.” This was to keep it Black without saying this was a FUBU or For Us By Us event.

February 2, 2020 marked the end of an era. Once again the West Oakland Library door is shut. Our collaboration between OPL and a community of writers whose presence over the years continues in cyberspace as an AfroFuture presence. We are happy Jamie Turbak, OPL Director, acknowledges the consecrated sacred portal linked to ancestor participants like Arnold J. White, McClymond’s High alumnus whose “Oaktown” mosaic is a living anthem.

I remember meeting Arnold at the old Housewives Market at his art show there. I remember he encouraged my younger daughter, TaSin when she said she was an artist. We became fast friends after that and Arnold White was our resident artist each year at the Poetry Celebration. He eventually started writing poetry too. “Bag Lady” was his first poem. He loved to share the background of his work with audiences. I hope footage of some of these programs are in someone’s library. If so, please make a copy available to the West Oakland library and let me know. For fifteen or more years, the Oakland studio KTOP would record the programs and make the videos available to the public. I never thought these tapes would be thrown away and so missed out on getting my own copies.

When Galleria Arnold White opened in North Oakland, the proprietor began to host our official after party following the Poetry Celebration. We had a lot of fun. Arnold White is now an ancestor. Adam David Miller is an ancestor. Dennis Omowale Cutten is an ancestor. Joy Holland is an ancestor. Kamau Seitu is an ancestor. Lee Williams is an ancestor. Ase. Ase. Ase. “The Oakland Public Library system is second oldest library in California,” Christine Saed, also an ancestor, tells the audience at the 8th Annual Poetry Celebration. Ina Coolbrith, an Oakland Public Librarian, was the first poet laureate for California and the first Poet Laureate of any state.

A city is as rich as its people and its peoples’ heritage. The Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry acknowledges this as it also uses these lessons from the past to shape current issues like gentrification, economic exclusion, and systemic erasure.

With eloquence, the djali or West African griot sang our story, a story 'cross oceans, ‘cross US territories where Africans newly freed settled and prospered. We are not beholden. America, West Oakland, the original city was established by African Americans. Pullman porters lifted the economy and the Black artists and investors like Slim Jenkins made West Oakland, a Harlem in the West. Just like The Fillmore District across the Bay boasted Black homeowners and business leaders, so did Oakland and Richmond and probably many other Northern California municipalities.

The African American Celebration through Poetry (AACP)—I fluctuate between the anchor name and the more recent tag, A Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry (CAAPTP), is a reminder of this legacy which is systemically buried under landfill.

The testimony of living ancestors and this document tell a story outsiders do not know. It is important to make sure we tell it and tell it right.

I hope our original manuscript surfaces one day. A volunteer compiled the original documents and then disappeared. She lived in the Dimond District. If you are out there, return it to the West Oakland Library and ask the staff to call me. I also hope people who knew poets who participated will send us photos and work to put on the project website. I hope anyone with videos and photos of performances 1990-2020 will also send us copies so we can make them available.

Lastly, I hope this document, another slice of a too often ignored legacy of an African and American people, is read for insight and activation-- There is no reason why Black people still must fight for honor and respect. Perhaps 2025 will be the year our hue-manity is finally unquestioned. (I wrote this in 2020.)

Libations for the Egun

This poem was written for the 30th Anniversary. In the poem Wanda Sabir calls the names of poets who have graced the stage as well as prominent individuals in West Oakland history. At the event the audience was invited to call the names of its loved ones and honored ancestors. People were also encouraged to call honored ancestors’ names to affirm their important and necessary presence at the gathering.

The poetry celebrations would begin with libations and African drumming. Chike Nwoffiah from Lagos joined us early on and played his drum and sang. Later Babatunde Lea joined us and played the drums while his daughter Tanya danced. At another time Raymond Nat Turner would have a jazz ensemble with saxophonist, Howard Wiley; drummer on traps and bassist – he wordsmith and djali bringing the news. More recently, Rahim Sabir, my brother-in-law, has joined us on djembe. Iya Halifu Oṣumare has poured libations as well. However, for the 30th Anniversary the libation was this poem “It’s Nothing Short of Amazing . . . this Grace.”

It’s Nothing Short of Amazing . . . this Grace (photo of me)
by Wanda Sabir

This poem is water

It is palm wine to the ancestors

Ones with heads up lips parted

Utterance stuck in throat

It is fresh water with peppermint

It is nommo

Words into flesh

Blackness

Melanin

A magic hue

Sun kissed by time

This poem is libation to

30 years and 30 first Saturdays in West Oakland

18th and Adeline

Sometimes we sang happy birthday to

Langston Hughes – Feb. 1

Bob Marley – Feb. 6

Jamal Ali – Feb. 6

Mr. Nathaniel Kilgore – rhetorician, Berkeley grad. Now that man knew words. Lived at Oak Center 1 Apartments, rode his bike when Black men were not riding bikes, wearing bike tights, cycling shoes, gloves and a helmet—in bright orange he was cool and visible. He taught me to own the street before bike lanes . . . before biking while Black became an anomaly

Ashay to Mr. Kilgore

Ashay to Lee Williams who listened to trees and to Joy Holland who arrived with bags packed for Africa filled with African American legacy: fountain pens, stop lights, telephones, telegraph machines, home security systems, cure for polio, black beauty supplies, blood transfusion, paper bags, ironing boards, computer operating systems, showers and portable heaters, air conditioners, gas masks and peanut butter

Garrett Morgan Sr.'s stop light and gas mask; Madam CJ Walker’s African American haircare line ; Lewis Howard Latimer’s light filament and telephone; Sarah Boone’s ironing board; William B. Purvis fountain pen and paper bags; Marie Van Brittan Brown’s home security system; Dr. Charles Drew’s work with blood plasma, blood banks; Dr. Daniel Hale’s open heart surgery and Henrietta Lacks’ immortal cells cure for polio, HPV-18 (human papillomavirus 18), herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, Parkinson's disease, certain types of genetic diagnoses, cancer, AIDS.

Ashay, Ashay to these inventors whose parents were often formerly enslaved, didn’t always have the opportunities we have now to attend school yet they accomplished so much.

Ashay to mix media artist and poet, Arnold White for his “Oaktown” and “Bag Lady.” Arnold would host the Poetry Celebration after party at his North Oakland Galleria.

Ashay to poet ancestors Richard Brown, Shahid, Monica Pree, Kamau Seitu, Sister Umus Salaama, Brother Omowale “A Love Supreme” Cutten and Melvin Dickson. Melvin was a friend of Edy Boone’s who introduced us. Melvin gave me my first poetry gig. I wrote a poem for the Huey P. Newton Libation at deFremery Park 31 years ago—the year before Richard Moore and I sat down with the West Oakland Branch Librarian—Southern Black Woman who went into her petty cash drawer to make this program possible.

Libations for the poets still here: Avotcja, Gene, Karla, Makeda, Najeeba Jaja. Call your own names. . . We pour to the collective presence and say Ashay

This liquid amber is for the safe arrival of precious cargo. . . so many ancestors

Ashay for Ms. Delilah Beasley, maverick Oakland Tribune journalist and civil rights activist who recorded California’s African Trailblazers and their fight against the slave trade

Imagine slavery in a state named after a Black Queen Califia?

This water is for the oceans traveled and those who jumped or were tossed over. . . we remember you and honor your presence here today

Ashay

What's left of the stew is the roux what we use to start over. . . it contains the secret sauce passed through blood and bone cross lineages tied in knots and then hidden away for times like this

To those within the sound of my voice, reach into those forgotten sacred places and say Ashay

This pot liquor is for days like this. It is the balm not in Jerusalem or even Elmina . . . it is California conjuring by way of Louisiana and Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas . . . migratory patterns – like birds searching for a place to nest our ancestors came west

The salve smooths wrinkled minds and calms what trembles. It also contains medicine for what is scattered or diseased, chafed or scarred. It lives in our African souls and is self-rejuvenating

Touch it and say Ashay

Catch the butter trickling down your chin after a plate of pancakes with syrup granny sent Peaches to the tree to tap or perhaps to the hive where one queen bows to the other -- a royal exchange

We pour this sticky sweetness, this flavored staff of life, this everything we are . . . we-- tree people, honey-bee people, dry-bones walking cross water people are here because our ancestors believed in something . . . got to believe in something

Why not believe in Blackness

Ancestors are names on ledgers carved into our hearts

We are they and they are we

Ashay

This libation is for Piri Thomas, Sarah Webster Fabio , Pat Parker, Zora Neale Hurston, Jimmy Baldwin, Mary Ellen Pleasant, Ms. Biddy Mason, Ruth Waddy, Noah Purifoy, Col. Allen Allensworth, Brigadier General Charles Young , Edsel Matthews, Koncepts Cultural Gallery ; Ben Hazzard, artist, professor, Reginald Lockett, Juke Box Press, Unofficial Poet Laureate Oakland, CA—He said Yes. . .

It is for James Weldon Johnson and the Hon. Noble Drew Ali, Hon. Marcus Garvey, the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, Dr. George Washington Carver and Dr. Carter G. Woodson. . . Here’s to Sojourner Truth and General Harriett Tubman Ross too

Ashay!

This libation is the sound of silences heated with heartbeats we invoke with this ashay. . . this bit of matter. . . this piece of Atlantis . . . along a crooked trail of tears spilling overflowing into waterways south and west -- (Indian and Pacific)

Here we are together on Langston Hughes' Birthday weekend again. . . Friday, Feb. 1, 2002 a stamp was released and we celebrated/ Gwen Ifill , maverick journalist is also honored today, Forever.

Libations for the reunion 1525-1672 in California and in Virginia 1619-2019:

400 years 500 years after the first kidnap and the last

We are . . . still here

A people whose ancestors built America yet earn no royalties. The note is due and copyright pending. We are a people who do not believe in sampling.

1990-2020 we are still here

In Oakland -- Oaktown, a city that could and did because Africans came, settled, and stayed from Harriett Smith aka Makinya Kouyate’s family from Madagascar to Jenny Prentice, Jack London’s Black Madonna—he loved this woman: wet nurse, surrogate mother; to the Hon. William Alexander Leidesdorff founding African father of this state and of the City across the Bay

We are

It is – all of this is possible

Because of Allah, God, Oludamare’s

Amazing

Amazing grace ©January 2020

When I’d rush into the West Auditorium where the Poetry Celebration occurred on the first Saturday in February, Christine would always have a stunning bowl of freshly cut flowers in the center of the table. After the program, they always went home with me—flowers and any vegan cookies left.

It was a running joke about how close to 1 p.m. it would be before I arrived. When the kids were younger, I’d pick up donations from The Bread Workshop near Strawberry Creek in Berkeley on Friday afternoon when I was picking kids up from school. Then on Saturday, I’d run back to Berkeley to pick up Mexican pastries from Pepitos and then more delicious fare at Your Black Muslim Bakery. Delightful Foods Bakery would ship its donation to us or when the girls grew up, one of them might pick up the cookies from their father’s shop for me.

I also would buy the spreads and crackers and meats and cheeses and veggies. Later we just started getting deli trays which were a lot easier to manage than going to 4-5 stores. Now, we have a wonderful couple, Reggie and Juanita Alexander who have been donating deli trays. Gene Howell brings beverages and for the 30th Anniversary another patron volunteer, Khalilah El Amin picked up two cakes.

The food is something we have always had a lot of. Food keeps the kids happy, especially those years when it was raining outside, and parents couldn’t let the kids run around at the park across the street.

When everything is coordinated the quilts or artwork is hung before I arrive the night before and when I get to the auditorium the chairs have been set up the microphone plugged in and all I have to do is set up my camera. In the past, KTOP would be there with their professional cameras videotaping the programs. It was so exciting. I wish I’d gotten copies of all the programs.

Christine would come up with me and welcome everyone with a stack of circulating books on African American themes about poets and poetry patrons might appreciate.

After the program we cleared and cleaned the tables, often putting a few goodies in the staff refrigerator for the following week. We then packed the rest of the leftovers in boxes to take to Arnold White’s Galleria for the after party. Whatever we didn’t eat, Arnold would donate one of the programs that feed the hungry.

We’d listen to music, dance, tell stories and walk around the gallery to see what new work Arnold had up. Such visits were also a time to say hi to old favorites like the “piano” and the family of “stones.” Arnold would often send us home with postcards and tee-shirts. He was always so generous.

Former West Oakland Branch Librarian, Christine Saed reflects on her 17 Year Tenure with the African American Celebration through Poetry (collage from poetry celebrations past)

When Wanda phoned January 2020 to share her plans for this year’s African American Celebration through Poetry, she was also seeking assistance in locating some of my former colleagues as well as reflections on my tenure with this longstanding event. As she noted in her letter of invitation to the event, it is the longest lasting annual adult program currently offered in the City of Oakland’s Public Library system. For 17 years of the thirty-year run, I was the Branch Manager of West Oakland Branch Library that hosts the event.

During my time with the West Oakland community, we had the honor of providing a venue to many wonderful programs, including the Bay Area Blues Society’s Blues and BarBQ event, Black Panther Party programs featuring the history and legacy of the varied community services they initiated, the African American Quilters, the small business forums, John George Essay contest, Ubuntu Film Program and many more. Some are no longer featured, but others like the African American Celebration through Poetry live on due to efforts of dedicated people like Wanda Sabir who began the program before I started at the Branch and continues that effort today.

Wanda began a tradition of having a focused theme for the event sometime in the 1990s. Themes have included:

Freedom on My Mind,

Not in Our Name,

Ready for Revolution: Honoring the Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement,

Ballots or Bullets,

Resistance Movements: Black Panthers Revisited at 40 Years

. Black Folks Loving Each Other,

Black Love: Love Yourself and Each Other, the Best Antidote to Violence,

Warrior Poets,

We Remember Our Stories

Some of the poets I remember include Avotcja, Dennis Omowale Cutten, Joy Holland, Gene Howell, Renay Jackson, Steve McCutcheon, Tureeda Mikell, Adam David Miller, Richard Moore, and Lee Williams. Please forgive me if I forgot you; the years are not always kind to memory,

And of course, artist, Arnold White, whose generosity and sense of community inspired him to host the after party for many years in his North Oakland studio/ home. He was an important part of the program for many years.

Thirty years is a respectable run, and the willingness of those who come forward to share their words in support of Wanda’s work make it possible for her to sustain this forum where people can have their voices heard and make public the words they have woven together into a poem. It also reflects library history as California’s first Poet Laureate was also the first Library Director of Oakland Public Library during a period that Oakland aspired to be the Athens of the West. Today, several published poets are also library staff.

It is a splendid way to start African American History Month, building on that durable history and beckoning those who will shape our future to be part of our collective literary legacy so fittingly scheduled on Langston Hughes birthday weekend 2020.

Collage of Christine and Arnold and other ancestors

The Poets:

Spirit of Love

by Charles Curtis Blackwell

God is

As in everything

Time space distance

God is

Of love

Concerning love

God is

He who put love in us

Charity is the act

Of us giving

A love which God has given

Unto us

Even if love sits

There stagnant

Dormant quiet

Until something happens

And it blossoms

Blooms just like a flower

Love

Bursting Earth

Because God is

Love

Bent on Fire
by Charles Curtis Blackwell

You could have walked past me.

Maybe even in the opposite direction

Into the direction of the setting sun

Or towards the northern lights.

Instead you face me

Face to face.

Like something moving

Inside of you.

Something drawn by

Red hot tides

And I too

Could have walked over towards the rising

And the setting of the sun.

Instead that something moved and burned inside of me.

I was drawn to you.

Like the flame in fire burning.

Retha, Oretha, Aretha which do you prefer?

By Charles Curtis Blackwell

Part I

Blues-jazz-jazz-blues

gospel

The core of it all

Raw brute soul

Blues-R&B-gospel

Cut to the bone soul

in the root of pure

transforming music on fire

With permission granted

Mama, mama, may I

for great is thy countenance.

A voice in power

A voice empowered

Your Majesty, your Royal Highness.

Sing Jesus, Speak to me Jesus

For daddy taught her so well

Sit so well

Sit so well wit theee Retha

for great is thy faithfulness

Old sistars would reel and rock

young ones too

weep, moan, grown, cry and shout

touched by that voice

which echoed deep in their guts.

“Sing Retha, sing ya song sistar”

came a voice from the pulpit.

And another saying “Alright now.”

C.L.’s massive sermons ringing from New Bethel Baptist to Miss Mississippi, to Al Alabama, and ack to Detroit.

and the screams, the shouts, the moans

her voice capturing heartbreaks, setback

the misery of funerals atop funerals

Stronger than black beans, black eyed peas

Yet it was the deep penetrations of

Blackness Itself

With enough spice, to soothe our

Anger, quench our sadness

cause us to think and feel the love

which god had put in us.

Retha, Oretha! Yo Daddy’s calling you!

Part II

Deep blue, magnified by blues and soul

of ¾, 4/4, melody of heart

Aretha in the forefront, to the likes of Coltrane

John Lee Hooker, Lena Horne

move, move, with the spirit

thrusting forward

Reverend C. L. Franklin with S.C.L.C.

Aretha’s voice in a fundraiser for King

the blues of the bluest blues moving

behind the scenes

paying the bail for Angela

Sing Retha sing.

As the sounds came from everywhere

A radio in the window, a record store, a juke box, record

player, tape payer in a Ford, a Cadillac, a Buick

She was everywhere.

Porches, kitchens, neighborhood bar, Jip Joints, back

alleys, and churches too.

Creating a sense of community as

words of revolt blended oh so well with

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

And as bitter as Detroit could be

Aretha was in the air and so was the movement

But the message never registered with the isms of

America, so Detroit blazed with the flames, looting and

gunfire

Just like other cities that summer.

With respect being the hidden message

out of the ashes

The Republic of New Africa came forth

meeting at New Bethel

But Detroit as bitter as bitterness

Invading, Disrespecting their rights

in a flurry of gunfire and wounded police,

Reverend C.L. Franklin tried to explain

All of New Africa arrested.

But praise God for Judge Crocker applying The

Constitution

Sing Aretha, sing ya song Sistar

“How I Gor Over”

And rise to the occasion

with those Detroit cheeks

same as my cousin on Grand and Poe

I never caught Aretha live,

but I did catch Carol her sister.

And did she rock the house

satisfied

And there was a closeness between the two

Amazing grace.

Yes, Aretha captured the movement, the poverty

struggle, the revolt, protest and the suffering.

A voice which expressed her own sorrows

and sadness within

expressed with the high notes

The church would move with that call and response.

Screams and shouts

her voice

her gift given

And whenever called upon she gave.

Calling on Jesus

and shining.

Origin Stories continued

Baba Richard “Paradise Free Jah Love” Moore Reflects (pictures of Paradise (3)

During these times of what is being called a Covid19 Pandemic, there are literally no poetry readings, concerts, theater or public gatherings for the arts of any kind. A stark contrast to the times I like to call the California Poetry Goldrush when, around the turn of the century, here in the Greater Oakland-Berkeley East Bay Area, we had poetry venues in effect every day of the week! And on some days there would be two or three venues you could go to!

It all started for me in 1972, when I wrote my first article about our Berkeley High School Senior Picnic! A short time later at Xavier University in New Orleans, I would write a poem for a girl named Rose, called Flower Girl. It was my way of asking her out to our university ball. I didn't get the date but “Flower Girl” turned out to be my first signature poem. Some of my best friends are poems!

In the early ‘80s, after returning home from playing pro basketball in Argentina, I met Mrs. Edna Crutchfield, who had founded the International Black Writers & Artists in 1974, in Los Angeles. Mrs. Crutchfield would make her way up north and start a local #5, Oakland chapter, and a local #6 chapter in San Francisco. Darlene Roberts was president of the San Francisco chapter of the IBWA. And Mrs. Crutchfield would become so enamored by my enthusiasm for the organization, she would make me president of the Oakland chapter! Mrs. Crutchfield had conceived all of this before the advent of the internet or the cell phone!!! She has been a distinguished ancestor for many years now, but I have endeavored to carry forward her dream, and the IBWA now has over 40 chapters worldwide!

I don't recall when or where I met Wanda Sabir, probably at a local black poetry venue, but we both had such a fondness for poetry and black culture that we once actually talked on the phone for 8 hours! Straight! So when Wanda decided to put the African American Celebration through Poetry into effect, knowing my connections with the local poetry and arts scene, after hosting poetry readings at local venues like the legendary Afrometropolitan Poetry Series at Victor's Cafe, La Pena, the Jahva House, Egypt Theater, the House of Unity, Do 4 Self Books, East Side Arts, the Gingerbread House and the Parkway Theater, she called on me to help her organize that historical first event!

What started out as a nebulous nebula that would slowly form into a shimmering galaxy of local literary stars, would largely have its foundation in Wanda Sabir's brainchild of 1990, called the African American Celebration through Poetry, which would take place at the West Oakland library, every first Saturday of every February, during Black History Month! And would become sacred ground for local scribes, including Paradise, Wanda Sabir, James Cagney, Wordslanger, Lee Williams, Opal Palmer, Reginald Lockett, Dennis Omowale Cutten, Roxanne, Karen Mims, Karla Brundage, Kamau Seitu, Marvin X, Phavia Kujichagulia, Darlene Roberts and Katherine Parker (Sistas with Gaps), Gene Howell, Avotcja, Arnold White, Casper Banjo, Sprandore Geford, Yusef Najem, Tureeda Mikell, Steve McCutchen, Dr. Ellen Foster-Randle, Jennifer Jones, Donella Jones, Evelyn Washington, Yolanda Stevenson, Charles Curtis Blackwell, Chokwadi, William Brown, Vickie McGee, Lady Love, Douglass Katabazi Coleman, Keith Adkins, Beverley Wadley, Collen Fisher, Alan Laird of Expressions Art Gallery and a whole litany of Black All Stars of Bay Area poetry, music and art!

So for 30 years the African American Celebration through Poetry would be an annual Black History Month kick off, a homecoming for our community of local black poets, and a matrix for those up and coming young poets who were just beginning to write and recite!

There have been many highlights, my underground classic, "I Love Everything About You, But You" about cultural misappropriation, is an annual audience (sing along) favorite. That song actually started out as a love song; I was telling a girlfriend she loved everything about me but me! But then I was like: Wait a minute, this is bigger than us! There are people out there who like everything about us (black people) -our music, our color, our full lips, our culture, etc., but us!!!

Another one of my favorite performances is Dennis Cutten, finding new life after incarceration, declaring in a poem, "I am the Sun!" And Darlene Roberts classic theatrical piece, "But You' Still Black!" And too many other bright moments and memories to put on paper! But surely to be experienced at future celebrations!

I Love Everything About You, But You!

By Paradise Free Jah Love Supreme

They want the black spirit

They want the black mind

They want the black soul

They want the black behind

They want the black muscle

They want the black heart

They want the black music

They want the black art

They want the black rhythm

They want the black hips

They want the black power

They want the black lips

They want the black style

They want the black talk

They want the black skill

They want the black walk

They want the black rod

They want the black heat

They want the black coffee

They want the black meat

They want the black land

They want the black gold

They want the black diamonds

They want the black coal

They want the black oil

They want the black race

They want the black earth

They want the black space

They want the black dollars

They want the black gods

They want the black everything

But me and you, now that's odd

I Love Everything About You, But You

They want the black seeds

They want the black fruit

They want the black trees

They want the black roots

They want the black jazz

They want the black rap

They want the black reggae

They want the black dap

They want the black chocolate

They want the black bread

They want the black flavor

They want the black dread

They want the black body

They want the black tan

Cuz black don't crack

They want the black skin

They want the black mummies

Buried treasures and bones

Cuz they can't stand you

When you're living

But they dig you when you're gone

They want the black Madonna

They want the black savior

They want the black neighborhood

But not the black neighbor?

What are they trying to say?

I love everything about you, but you!

Aretha Franklin, The Radical Queen of Soul

by Paradise Free Jah Love

Like Prince, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordon, Tiger Woods, Venus and Serena Williams, Aretha Franklin came from that strong black father stock. From a towering black mountain of a man, the reverend C. L. Franklin.

It’s been said about Reverend Franklin that when he spoke from the pulpit even the clocks stopped to clap their hands and shout hallelujahs and amens! He was revered like a Black Pope and until Dr. Martin Luther King came along, and some would say nevertheless, was widely considered the preeminent Voice of the Black Church. Aretha Franklin could only have come from the loins of such a man – a bow that could shot her like an arrow or shooting star across the firmament of the pop world!

It took Mama Earth 100 billion humans coming up out of Africa and a trillion sunrises before she could fashion out of clay someone with a voice to say and express to the world in the right way. what women, black people, humanity and She, Mama Earth, wanted: R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Respect!

But even before that. Before God, the Original Poet and First Spoken Word Artist, would utter the first lyrics of the Uni-Verse, “Let there be light!” And before the Goddess had even thought about cooking stars for breakfast in the Skillet of Night. Before the dawn of Creation, bright, there was a rumbling deep in the soul of the Kosmos that would take 14 billion years for the galaxies to grind and turn and churn out a human wild cat distillation that would cry out to all the creatures in the Universe to - “THINK!” “You better think! Think about what you’re trying to do to me! Think! ThinK! THINK!”

A sister, sistah! A shooting Sis*Star, like the Black “carbonado” Diamond asteroid that was hurled and aimed across eons toward the heart of the Motherland, when it was still a part of the single world continent, Gondwanaland, and before heart-shaped Afrika was even formed (the only place outside of Brazil where the “King of Diamonds” - the rare and priceless Black Diamonds are found), Aretha emitted and resounded that rare, priceless, black diamond sound!

Legend has that even as a new born baby she could wail...articulately! And all the other babies in the nursery would stop crying to listen to baby Aretha vocalize her infant Blues songs. And many folks in her neighborhood lost many hours of sleep as she wailed into the wee hours of the night her baby versions of ‘Rock Steady” and “Young, Gifted & Black”, preparing for a career that would merit her 18 Grammys.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, at 406 Lucy Avenue, March 25, 1942. Aretha Louise Franklin moved with her parents, Clarence LaVaughn Franklin and Barbara Siggers Franklin, to Detroit, Michigan. She began her career as a child singing gospel at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where her father, C. L. Franklin, reigned in the pulpit and was a legendary circuit preacher.

Being a Daddy’s Girl, she absorbed his rhythms and cadences as well as those of the black musical royalty who graced their Baptist church sanctuary and visited the Rock Star-like preacher’s home: including Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, Dinah Washington, Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward - and the Reverend Martin Luther King, who Aretha, at age 16, would go on tour with. Ironically, Dr. King would be murdered in her birth town, Memphis, and she would sing at his funeral.

Aretha Franklin, a singular figure in American culture, was a child prodigy. Motown great Smokey Robinson recalled first hearing her sing when she was 4 years old. He noted that by age 7, “Aretha played big chords…complex church chords.” He told biographer David Ritz, that Franklin came out of the rich Detroit (Motown) culture that produced so many musical greats, “but she also…came from a distant musical planet where children are born with their gifts fully formed.” She had a voice, so full of history and power, that defined popular singing and would set the standard for American Popular music!

Like two forces of nature, the way her father preached the gospel in church, Aretha sang in the choir. Her mother died of a heart attack when she was 10 years old and she wound up having Gospel Queen, Mahalia Jackson as one of her stewards. Her mother sang and played the piano and, shortly after her passing, Aretha would learn to play piano by ear. In those early days, however, secular music like Jazz, R&B, the Blues - and any music that didn’t praise the Lord etc. was referred to as devil music.

Nevertheless, in 1954, Ray Charles released the chart topper, “I Got a Woman”, which combined gospel, jazz and Blues. Then in 1957, the King of Soul, and Aretha’s heart-throb, Sam Cooke, crossing over from Gospel into secular music, released the soul classic, “You Send Me”; Opening the floodgates for the acceptance of Soul Music and the likes of Bobby Womack, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Billy Preston, Otis Redding, James Brown and - Aretha Franklin, who in 1960, at 18, (following in the footsteps of her crush) would began her career outside the church at Columbia records. And soon thereafter, a star was born.

Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, and the Godfather, James Brown, Soul Brother number one, were like the Twin Titans of the Times, during the sixties and Seventies, with their Twin Anthems for women and Blacks, “Respect” and “Say it Loud, “I’m Black and I’m Proud!” She exceled at any music form she tried: Including Gospel, Jazz, Blues, Rhythm & Blues and Country. And in 1998 at Grammys she was asked to step in at the last minute for Luciano Pavarotti(!), who was too ill to perform, and sing “Nessun Dorma,” an aria written specifically for an operatic tenor, not a mezzo-soprano like Franklin. Nevertheless, Franklin flawlessly performed the aria in front of a global audience estimated at 1 billion. Her performance was recognized by Billboard as one of the greatest awards show performances of all time.

She also absorbed and inherited her father’s political sensibilities as well: an unapologetic blackness, a militant dignity, and the devotion to using her talent to further the cause of black freedom. Thus at the height of her fame in 1970, Franklin supported political prisoner, Angela Davis, who had been accused of purchasing firearms used in the takeover of a court room in Marin County, California, and who was charged with conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder. Franklin told Jet magazine that she wanted to post Davis’s bond, “whether it’s $100,000 or $250,000.” A quarter million!?!

“Angela Davis must go free,” Franklin said to Jet Magazine in 1970. “Black people will be free. I’ve been locked up (for disturbing the peace in Detroit) and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace. Jail is hell to be in. I’m going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she’s a Black woman and she wants freedom for Black people.”

Franklin noted that she had the money to post bond because she’d earned it from black people. She therefore wanted to use it “in ways that will help our people.” Ultimately, she was unable to post the bond because she was out of the country at the time. Instead, it was paid by Rodger McAfee, a progressive, white California farmer.

Angela Davis responded thankfully, “Her bold public call for justice in my case helped in a major way to consolidate the international campaign for my freedom.” Franklin had no concern of losing her audience or future opportunities because of her support for a radical freedom fighter. She was protected by the times and her own sense of integrity and truth.

This is what we hear in Aretha’s voice and can still her on her recordings. Truth. It is a voice that contains spiritual honesty, the field or street holler, the blues moan, the gospel shout, and jazz improvisation. Like a human wild cat cry, her vocalizations are neither timid nor shy. They are sensually grounded and spiritually transcendent and completely lacking in contradiction. Aretha’s voice is what democracy sounds like - America at its best! It also transcends national boundaries, invoking the West African cultures that gave birth to diasporic musical practices; it appeals to a global audience who appreciate her sound. I noticed that even one of my Facebook friends in Russia had posted the news of Aretha’s passing.

Aretha Franklin, the obvious people’s choice, sang at the inauguration of the election of the first black president in 2008. But, ala and even (?) before the emergence of Colin Kaepernick, because of her strong political beliefs, she chose to sing, “My Country Tis of Thee”, instead of about “bombs bursting in air”! Wow! What a time to stand up for your principles!

What ever happened to the Golden Age that the Black Folk group the Fifth Dimension sang about 50 years ago, “This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius”? The Golden Age tried to raise its lovely head with the Be Boppers and the Beatniks of the Fifties, the Hippies, Rockers and Flower Children of the Sixties and the Revolutionaries of the Seventies, but the System, the Establishment, the Status Quo - shut them all down. Then came the Republican Revolution of the Eighties! Ugh!

Aretha Franklin was a part of that Golden Constellation of the 50s, 60s and 70s! And had to endure through the premature deaths of many of her contemporaries (most of them murdered, in one way or another, by The System), including Dr. Martin Luther King, Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Dorothy Dandridge, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, John and Bobbie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Jim Morrison, Princess Di, David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Bob Marley, Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali, Richard Pryor, Sly Stone (silenced), Prince, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Huey P. Newton, Malcolm X, Ron Brown, Harold Washington, Tupac and Elvis Presley! Etc etc! It’s kind of hard to start a golden age when all your gold is looted by bandits! But we shall have our Golden Age nevertheless!

City Lights and Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, waxed so insightful and poetically when he said, “There’s a poet born in all of us. But the world beats it out of most of us.” Aretha, from cradle to crown and throughout her life, never stopped wailing! She made folks think and earned a whole world of respect.

President Obama [said], “Aretha helped define the American experience. In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade—our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace.”

After gracing the planet for 76 years, Aretha Franklin joined the AnceStars, Thursday, August 16, 2018.

Close the West Oakland Library?! Oh No!

The themes varied each year and I remember the year that the City of Oakland decided that to save money it was going to close branches. West Oakland was on that hit list. We told the patrons this that afternoon and spent time during the program to have everyone write a note, which we collected for the mayor and council.

I think this poem, Raymond Nat Turner wrote, speaks to the reason why libraries are so important to all people; however, more specifically Black people. We are descendants of a people who were denied access to literature. We were punished for wanting to learn to read and write. Our ancestors lost hands and tongues for daring to defy these laws.

We were so excited to see Raymond for the 30th Anniversary. He lives in New York, yet keeps a house here so he and his wife, Ziggy were in town for several gigs and an award. Raymond who worked for the Berkeley Public Library was being honored with a Raymond Nat Turner Day February 2020.

100 Librarians (fix layout)

By Raymond Nat Turner

(For Oakland, Geri, Michelle, and Stewart)

I'm lookin'...

I'm lookin' here and there

I'm searchin' everywhere

I'm lookin'...

For 100 librarians to

Leap from bookmobiles,

Wrestle black boys off corners,

Arrest their attention,

Transport them to branches,

Handcuff them to the stacks and

Interrogate them:

“Tubman was strapped, wasn't she?”

“Douglas assaulted his masta, didn't he?”

“Ida interfered with a lynching, didn't she? Didn’t she?

Interrogate them:

“You could ID John Brown in a lineup, couldn't you?”

“Where'd Ol' Nat hide the murder weapon? Where?!”

Interrogate them:

“Who’s the ‘Brown Bomber’?

“What’s ‘Ali Bombaye’?

Interrogate them:

"Home was stolen 18 times—who did it ? Who?!”

“Who performed the first open heart surgery?”

“Who invented the shoe lasting machine, traffic light, and airbrakes?” “Who invented bleach, mayonnaise, shaving cream, peanut butter and axel grease? Who?!”

“Who went by the street name, Wizard of Tuskegee? Who?!”

I'm lookin'...

I'm lookin' here and there

I'm searchin' everywhere

I'm lookin'...

For 100 librarians to

Diagram crime scenes called Cape Coast Castle,

Goree Island, and The Point of No Return

Sketch composites of kidnappers, mutilators, murderers,

Rapists-- alias Christian Foundingfathers...

Investigate dealers of

Iboe, Wolof, Ashanti,

Fulani, Mandingo and

Crackdown on criminals—

DisInformation, MisEducation and Digital Jim Crow!

I'm lookin'...

I'm lookin' here and there

I'm searchin' everywhere

I'm lookin'...

For 100 librarians to

Investigate what boys know

About Brown v. The Board of Education,

Black Codes, Slave Codes,

Fanon, Nkrumah, Lumumba,

Contras and crack cocaine—

Investigate When 100 homicides became routine!

I'm lookin'...

I'm lookin' here and there

I'm searchin' everywhere

I'm lookin'...

For 100 librarians to

Throw the books at boys--

Try them as adults...

Reading Malcolm,

Give ’em hard time—

Black Awakening in Capitalist America,

Indeterminate sentences:

Das Kapital,

Lock ’em in solitary

with The Invisible Man,

Slam their heads into

The Souls of Black Folk,

Transfer them to reference and

Choke them with Chaucer’s studies at the University of Timbuktu,

Strike them with Memphis, Greenwood, Rosewood,

Kush, Kemet, or 17 universities and

70 Libraries the Moors built

I'm lookin'...

I'm lookin' here and there

I'm searchin' everywhere

I'm lookin'...

For 100 librarians to

Recapture wards

With sweetly-calculated strokes,

Inject them with high expectations—

Cool and unusual punishment!

Watch them jerk, writhe,

Gasp for breath, and fight

To keep hearts and libraries

OPEN...

MY FIRST MAJOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE AS A POET

by André Le Mont Wilson

INTRODUCTION:

The following are excerpts of my diary entry on February 2, 2013. I attended my first Annual Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry on the twenty-third. My diary describes it as “my first major public performance as a poet.” That February, I still grieved the loss of both parents the previous year. Both of my parents were poets, so I funneled my grief into sharing their poetry at workshops. But the Celebration was my coming out as a poet, writer, storyteller, and singer. Because the Celebration celebrates ancestors, I performed my parents’ poems alongside my own. The Celebration also welcomed a full range of my work. I had no idea that the pieces I read, recited, sang, and performed at the Annual Celebration in 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 would later be published in such journals as The New Engagement, Not You Mother’s Breast Milk, Page & Spine, and the Alexandria Quarterly. The slaves called Harriet Tubman “Moses.” Organizer Wanda Sabir is the Moses of African American poetry. She brings along as many as she can. The success and longevity of the Celebration are because of her love and dedication. I feel honored to publish in an anthology recognizing the achievements of the Annual Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry.

February 2, 2013

Today I scored my first major public performance as a poet at the 23rd Annual African American Celebration through Poetry at the West Oakland Branch of the Oakland Public Library. Since I first learned of the poetry celebration, I wrote and rehearsed. For the poetry celebration, I wore my father’s green and brown dashiki and my mother’s apricot-and-plum-seed necklace. I always wear something of my parents when I read their poetry to have them close to me. I arrived early to a multipurpose room so void of people and populated with chairs that I thought the event had been cancelled and no one had informed me. The room gradually filled. Monique arrived early, John of Evans Vending arrived a little later, Jackie from church was there with her granddaughter Tasia, Rob was there, and a lot of mostly African Americans of all ages. I smiled at seeing children because I had tailored my selection to them.

I gushed with fan-struck adoration when Leroy Moore limped into the room. He’s the most famous Afro crip poet in the Bay Area. I had watched his performances on YouTube and read his poems on Wordgathering. I jumped at being on the same stage with him. I rushed forward and shook his hand, calling him a “movie star.” “Naw, I don’t know about that,” he said in a self-effacing way, but he is a star to me. The organizer, Wanda Sabir, arrived late along with the food and most of the people—CP time. The program started at 1:30 with a Yoruba priestess pouring a libation of bottled water into a bowl on the floor for our ancestors. Then we called out their names. I said Mom and Dad. My name and poems were printed on the program as a feature poet. I have been studying Mom and Dad’s poems so long that I tear up when I think I now have a document worthy of being archived.

I focused so much on my performance that I remember little about the poets who preceded and followed me. I remember their readings impressed me with their use of words, language, and gestures. I absorbed it all in, taking mental notes to incorporate in my own performance. I remember wishing Mom was here and being glad I could make this journey for her. Wanda nodded at me and I took to the podium set on the floor in front of the stage without a mic. I began by reading my father’s letter to me to come get his poetry after his death. I touched upon my parents’ deaths and how they had met. I then launched into three poems on their divorce: Dad’s “Clown and His Mistress II”, Mom’s “i believe in VAMPIRES”, and my “Cobblestones”, interspersed with brief descriptive transitions. I changed course to the African/African American segment with Dad’s “African Maiden”, which received a thunderous applause, my “Changamire”, which received applause as well, and Mom’s and my “Dream”, which ended with me looking up at the angels. I closed my set with the showstopper “Would You Love Me If I’m Bald?” Family and friends congratulated me when I left the podium. People snapped my picture. A bald man hugged me. Wanda told me she loved my “performance.” Tasia took a copy of “Bald” and read it in the car on the way home. John asked when I would perform next, and a lady paid me my first $3.00 for a chapbook I printed.

Would You Love Me If I’m Bald?

Would you love me if I’m bald?

Eyes roam to empty spaces.

The bleached have smiling faces.

Would you love me if I’m bald?

Could you love me if I’m bald?

I don’t wear Beyoncé’s mop

Or mean Mister T’s Mohawk.

Could you love me if I’m bald?

Should you love me if I’m bald?

My scalp shines a blank billboard.

I’m not renting. Praise the Lord!

Should you love me if I’m bald?

Would you love me if I’m bald?

When ten I pouffed my first ‘fro

But the kids called me Bozo!

Would you love me if I’m bald?

A Tribute to Kamau Seitu, The Quiet Warrior

by Damu Sudi Ali

"Only the poets know the truth about us . . ." a testy James Baldwin opioned to a captive audience of mainly white middle-class Ivy league college students. By the honorific title "poets," the brilliant African American writer, orator, and fiery civil rights activist explains that he means all artists -that particular breed of human beings who are not content to simply to live the "good life" or the "bad" life but who are driven to explore the true meaning and purpose of life itself; principled, deeply spiritual, and sensitive individuals, who are compared to plumb the very depths and scale the highest heights of human existence, experience, and purpose. And then, finally, like the good "point" men and women they become, fulfill their mission of reconnaissance of the known world for the rest of humanity, reporting back to their fellow men and women about the perilous, steep, and deep terrain to be traversed in completing the existential journey all human beings must make through time and space from birth until death.

There is a mysterious force in the universe that seems to recruit individuals of a certain temperament, precisely the temperament of an artist, to act as sentinels and guardians over all human societies; a select crew of the anointed few, chosen by only God knows who to enlighten and civilize the whole human race. This is the major proposition and premise of Baldwin's recorded lecture circa 1963 to 1965, boldly asserting that the "poets" and ". . . only the poets know the truth about us." Moreover, he laments that ". . . something awful and terrible is happening to a civilization that refuses to listen and heed the report that only poets can make." Recorded during the turbulent years of the Black Civil Rights movement and the Black Power Movement of the 1950s and 1960s and only later entitled "The Struggle," Baldwin draws upon his own experience as an artist in Jim Crow America as testimony that, as an artist with integrity who refuses to tell a lie, ". . . you are corralled, you are bull whipped into dealing with whatever it was that hurt you, or by chance, helped you, "to connect then commanded by this same unrelenting force to use that experience of whatever it was that hurt you, or by chance, helped you, "to connect with everyone else alive," and thereby achieve self-actualization for yourself and become the benevolent spirit and that beacon of light in the universe illuminating the path of those that follow.

My esteemed colleague, beloved friend, and spiritual brother, Kamau Seitu, was such a beacon of light and inspiration for the Black community of New Orleans, Louisiana, Oakland, California, and the entire San Francisco Bay Area until he transitioned on November 28, 2009 and ascended up to the realm of pure spirit to join and become yet another of our revered and beloved ancestors. In the Swahili language of the motherland Africa, his first name "Kamau" means "quiet warrior." And those who knew Kamau well, knew he was all of that much more. For he was first of all, a family man, a devoted father to his three children, a loyal friend to many, a wise councilor, and a consummate artist of many talents and diverse and profound learning. He was the epitome of the "warrior poet" that Amiri Baraka challenged all Black artists to become in the heat of the battle for Black civil rights and human rights, and Black liberation. And because he lived his life as an uncompromising Black artist with integrity, Kamau has left a huge legacy of poetry and excellent jazz compositions for the edification of future generations to come. He was indeed an African griot, a visionary poet, and an intrepid point man for all humanity. He is well worth listening to. And he has not been heard in the manner befitting an artist of his high caliber and outstanding achievement.

He was definitely a black warrior and not always quiet but fierce and furious about Black liberation and the negation of white supremacy. In his masterful jazz compositions, he often threw down the gauntlet: "No more exploitation," he proclaimed in his driving military-march like composition which he gave that provocative title of protest as a manifesto of Black liberation and his commitment to what Baldwin called "the Struggle." And being called upon to play this powerful composition with Kamau on the CD entitled "Blessings," recorded by the Jazz collective Umoja! In 1966, I can vouch for the fact that "No More Exploitation" is a heavyweight jazz composition that is reminiscent of the John Coltrane Jazz classic Giant Steps, and worthy to be heard and played by jazz musicians for many more years to come.

Certainly, in his poetry and music, there are elements of stoicism and militancy, but temperate by general love humanity and the heartside to hearthside of homecome family and friends. come on mastered the fine art of being, finally, I fight her Anna lover, or were you Anna nurturer and a protector of the weekend most vulnerable among us. he had a big heart and showed undying love for his black brothers and sisters in Africa and the African Diaspora worldwide. nowhere was this more evident than in the love and devotion he have for his twin daughters the bedji, Taiwan and kahinde, his son Brian, and his grandchildren Zion, sage, Cameron, Damian, Casey, and sassafras.

I remember quite vividly the day I visited a Camille at his apartment near lake Maryland Oakland when the abagi were still babies and he wipes over them with the maternal instincts of a mother protecting her newborn. yeah just ridden the poem lullaby to black children and proudly shared it with me with a brightest smile of happiness and contentment.

Lullaby to black children

By Kamau Seitu (1980)

Your breath like honey

and skin so soft,

you little I

do not feel lost.

I will sing, hum

and rock you to sleep

Beautiful black babies

don't cry or weep.

From the realm of time

into the solidity of bone; before too long

you will be full grown.

More beautiful than ever, precious children of mine,

your innocence will vanish with the passing of time.

And the beauty and kindness your vision will create

will shine bright with love

and eliminate hate.

You're a pleasure little treasure,

you're my soul's delight. Dream on black babies,

dream on all night.

Perhaps Kamal's most famous and memorable poem, and one of my favorites is the tribute he pays to the giants of what America's only original art form, the music mislable and despairingly at first called jazz oh yes. the poem reads like a geniality of the creators of what bases Charles parenthetical Charlie Mingus and composer, conductor in Pinterest Duke Ellington preferred to call black classical music, The title of Kamau's poem.

I am the link, the vehicle through which my ancestors speak.

My rhythms are vibrations from the beginning of time.

I am the link, the vehicle through which a saxophone screams,

A trumpet Wells, I guitar cries, a singer siz A trumpet Wells, a guitar cries, AA singer sighs.

I am BIRD, DUKE, PREZ, and TRANE.

I am CHANO POZO, The first conga man.

I am the link; BABY DODDS a bad drummer.

I am the vehicle; JOHNNY DODDS, a reed man.

I am the guitar duo of CHARLIE CHRISTIAN and WES MONTGOMERY.

I am the vehicle, the interchangeable life's blood

That flows and flows; I am COZY COLES.

I am the ANCESTRAL SPIRIT, THE COMPOSER.

Through me new birth is given too FLETCHER HENDERSON, BILLY STRAYHORN, OLIVER NELSON, DON REDMAN, DUKE PEARSON and EUBIE BLAKE.

I am Ancestral Wisdom speaking through FREDDIE KEPPARD, who once said, "Keep it covered or they'll steal it."

Damu Sudi Alii (photo in performance)

Introduction to Three Poems

The three poems that I have chosen to include in the 30th Annual African American Poets and Their Poetry Celebration anthology each, in its own way, offer testimony of how I have managed to survive with my good sense intact after 74 years of racial antagonism, persecution, and discrimination at the hands of white America. In a very real sense, poetry has enabled me to consistently fight back in words and deeds against a formidable enemy in white racism and white supremacy and, at the same time, find some semblance of peace within my own soul and some sense of justice, knowing that I have not minced words in my judgment of this hypocritical world and depraved society in which I have been forced to live out my life.

Neither of the three poems that I chose to share in this anthology reflect the tone of righteous indignation that I have expressed in some of my poems like the Black rage expressed in "The White Maniac", or the derisive and probing irony of a rap poem I wrote entitled "Too Strong, Too Black!". Yet, all three poems speak volumes about the grit and moxie, and love of family and God required for Black people to survive the perilous trek through the wilderness of North America to the promised land of freedom and equality in this treacherous world.

The first poem, "Song of Somayah", was written in memory of a very good friend and comrade born Renee Moore and affectionately called "Peaches” by all those that loved her. I never asked her why she was called "Peaches", but I always assumed it was because she sang the Nina Simone composition "Four Women" with so much power and conviction and ended it so forcefully and convincingly with the famous line, "...my name is PEACHES!" that the nickname just naturally stuck with her. After five or six years of fighting bravely with her comrades in the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense against the system of racism and police brutality against African Americans in the late 1960's, Peaches converted to Islam and changed her name to Somayah Hakeem. She was involved in the shootout with the Los Angeles Police Department in 1969 that ended with her walking courageously out of the bullet-riddled Panther headquarters building with her hands up in the air in order to save the lives of her comrades still hunkering down inside the building against a blitzkrieg attack by the Los Angeles Police Department and the F. B. I. Somayah, or Peaches as she continued to be called, was a kind and loving and courageous Black woman who like so many of the unsung heroes and heroines in our struggle died under vey inhumane conditions after being wrongfully arrested and sent to prison where she suffered endlessly with Sickle Cell anemia. She was my very good friend and gave me my very first copy of the Quran. I wrote this poem using her new Muslim name “Somayah" as the personification of an east wind from Africa, a wind of change blowing through a non-repentant and racist United States of America.

The second poem that I contributed was written while I was in exile during the height of the Black Power Struggle in circa 1969 - 1971. I was committed to being a part of what I saw as an impending revolution and the establishment of a true democracy in America free of prejudice, racism, police brutality, inequality, injustice, and active genocide being perpetrated against the Black community. I had not seen or heard from my mother for at least 6 years and I was, of course, missing her and wanting to be with her and give her assurance that I was okay. The poem “Naomi, My Pleasantness" was written in that frame of mind and in that context one night as I contemplated the birth of my second child and daughter.

The third poem entitled “Revenge" speaks for itself. It should not be taken in the wrong spirit to mean I believe in "turning the other cheek” and letting people mercilessly and brutally oppress and kill you without defending yourself. However, I chose this as one of my poems to include in the anthology because the last line of the poem states very succinctly my philosophy and belief that "Only love, at last, will conquer hate.

Song of Somayah

By Damu Sudi Alii (layout)

Composed February 9, 1981

Somayah! East wind rising from the shores of Africa

unmasks the angry face of God;

Somayah! Raging terribly ‘cross the sea,

Whipping the placid waters of our tragic maiden voyage

to wake the sleeping spirit of our long forgotten dead.

Sing! Oh, immortal voices of despair. Hear! Oh, Black nation - lost!

Hear their ceaseless wailing, the sad song of our fathers -

The voice of Somayah, east wind from Africa

calling us home to freedom.

Sing! Somayah!

Somayah! Wind of change sweeping over this wicked land -

Harken to her, listen closely, feel her mighty, righteous beat;

In the center of the storm, in the wake of life’s defeats,

Fight on! She whispers, blowing fiercely in the streets!

Fight on she roared across the ocean to the slaves all bound in chains.

Fight on! She roars in spite of pain ‘til victory is gained.

Sing! Oh, sing! Somayah!

Ancient spirit of our fathers has touched the hearts and minds of many.

Will you lend an ear to hear her songs of freedom?

Solemnly, they ring in the air,

Crying out for justice,

Powerful; a prayer.

A champion of justice, “Sister Peaches” was her name;

Frail and weak, she fights for justice resolutely just the same! And Somayah whistling through the trees looked down on Peaches, fair - Decided she would give her voice to one so brave and rare. So she breathed her immortal song of love into our Peaches’ soul And she became Somayah, mortal. Now her story’s told.

Now, when Peaches sings those freedom songs that lifts our hopes so high, Somayah sings in a powerful voice that rises to the sky!

And Somayah blowing in the heavens hears Somayah down below, Descends, and lifts her voice to sing of victory, I know!

Sing! Sing! Somayah!

Pray for guidance in your songs; pray for victory to come, Pray for justice, pray for peace. Pray that Allah’s will be done! Pray! Pray! Somayah!

Naomi, My Pleasantness

By Damu Sudi Alii

Composed December, 1976

I’ve been pondering, dear mother, over just what I’d say

to express my love in some special way -

The best I can do to show you I care

is to send you God’s blessings,

And pray that He’s there

With you always in everything that you do,

Bringing joy, peace, and love - comforting you!

I want to be near you; I miss you so much!

Dear Lord! Please keep us until I can touch

Your hands, so blessed, your precious greying hair;

On your doorsteps, I’ll stand in your presence and stare

In your face at the wrinkles that consecrate your brow,

In your eyes at the love that withstood somehow

My boyhood shenanigans, my grown-up mistakes

That too often left needless sorrow in their wake.

Yet you forgave me in spite of my ways;

God knows your prayers have lengthened my days.

Fond memories ever fresh in my mind

Of you, your nature, so ward and so kind.

What manner of woman? I’ve searched far and near -

Never to find another so dear

As you, my beloved, my mother, my friend.

The ties that bind us no power can rend.

Naomi, we call you - an old Hebrew name;

It’s meaning of goodness you loudly proclaim

By your generous giving, by the joy that you’ve brought

Doing so much for others as we all should and ought. It was harmony among all your children you sought; And love in the hearts of us all that you wrought.

No task was too hard, no challenge so great

That caused you to wonder or even hesitate

To give all you could, to sacrifice dearly;

You gave to us always, you toiled and strove yearly To provide us with the shelter and with our daily bread, And make certain we got some good sense in our head.

When others forsook me, you stood by my side; In your presence I always could come and abide. It’s this godliness, loving forgiveness in you

That makes me strive harder to be godly too. Naomi, My Pleasantness, no words can say

How my love for you grows stronger each day

Revenge

By Damu Sudi Alii

Composed 1990

O’ sweet revenge beget from bitter pain

Strike out for justice! Inflict pain again!

What victory is won? What evil wrought?

Exchanging blow for blow? It’s all for naught!

Beware! Lest your innocence begone

And leave you with revenge now to atone;

Triumph over offenders gained with spite

Yet leaves your heart to sadly ponder right.

And so you win, but then exact too much;

Pray! Who of us has Allah’s righteous touch?

“Vengeance is mine!” our Lord loudly proclaims

And wise men hear; the fool, a mortal, blames.

Compound the human debt! Heap flame on fire!

Damn the wretched knave that raised your ire.

Death to the one who dares insult your honor.

Have your revenge; replenish evil’s garner.

But when the truth is out and all is know,

All have transgressed and have some evil sown.

It’s all in vain - revenge; It’s human fate

That only love at last shall conquer hate

REMEMBERING THE UNSUNG GENIUS OF JOY HOLLAND

& OTHER BRICKS IN THE FOUNDATON OF THE

CELEBRATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN POETS & THEIR POETRY

by Avotcja (photo)

It’s here again. This yearly ritual… The 30th Annual Celebration of African-American Poets &

Their Poetry. And when Wanda asked me to write something about my dear friend JOY HOLLAND for this Anthology, I felt truly humbled.

I've been coming to this Celebration from the beginning & so many brilliant Artists have helped to make it what it has become. So I think I will begin with a few of the amazing Souls who laid the foundation. I have to start with 2 Women I call the Mothers of Bay Area Black Poetry: Professor, Poet, Performer, Scholar & Educator SARAH WEBSTER FABIO a foundational member of the West Coast Black Arts Movement. The amazing Mrs. EDNA CRUTCHFIELD founder of the

International Black Writers & Artists who took me under her wing in Los Angeles & Oakland. My alter-ego & running Buddy, (Educator/Poet), REGINALD LOCKETT of the Wordwind Chorus. Can’t forget my friend & Hero the great Poet, Vocalist, Artist, Disabilities Activist & super Dad LEE WILLIAMS. Lee left his body, but his powerful imprint remains on the lives of those of us who live with Disability every day of our lives. His example had a profound impact on me & my ability to deal with mine. I thank you BrothaMan for always being there for me & putting me on the right road to keep on keeping my creativity growing with dignity, pride & gratitude for the gifts. He taught me the importance of the Art of creating what he called “word movies” (Poetry that you could feel & visualize). He also taught me that a Wheel Chair was not a curse, but a wonderful work of Art created to help us get to where we were going!!!

And then there’s the enigma we call JOY HOLLAND. Joy was so many things she defies description. Joy was physically beautiful, brilliant & the consummate Artist. She was also a Scholar, a Poet, an Actress, a Playwright, a Fashion Designer, a Rabble Rouser, & a Neighborhood Activist, Joy & I were very serious History Buffs, and her knowledge of History showed up all over her Poetry “They came in the middle of the night… wearing bed sheets!" Or her “Port Chicago” She had a flirtatious sense of humor that was unstoppable “I fixed your favorite… ME!” And she was fearless… on the outside of her house she had a large sign that said “NO SON OF A BUSH FOR ANYTHING!!!”. Joy was flamboyantly proud of her Blackness, but never forgot “”We are a spiritual People”.

photo of Black Poets with Attitudes

One of the greatest joys in my life was being part of the group BLACK POETS WITH ATTITUDES. A group made up of JOY HOLLAND, BEVERLY JARRETT, ABIMBOLA ADAMA, WANDA SABIR & me AVOTCJA. Joy, in her role of Fashion Designer, made our red, black & green outfits (in honor of the great Marcus Garvey). She also made the red, black & green cover for my Music Stand, which I still use to this day. My dear friend Joy who now dances with the Ancestors, (never laying down her creativity even in death), never ever letting me forget “We are the mystery / The Magic / The Voodoo / The Key!”

by Avotcja

January 27, 2020

MATTER IS

WE WERE ALWAYS PART OF IT
by Avotcja

We were there long before it all began

There before the cataclysmic blast

We watched as part of the electrifying charge

That set this life as we know it in motion

We were there

And the spinning of our Spirits involuntarily assisted

In the birth of the first Stars

We helped with the placement of the Constellations

And orchestrated the arrangement of

Saturn, Uranus, the geometrical precision of Orion’s Belt

And the radiant consistency of Jupiter, Pluto & Mars

We were there

Awestruck, riding inside the inner heart of the Soul of Dreams

Through the heavenly medicine of the Milky Way

Listening

Witnessing the beginning of it all

Brazen Cosmic Peep Freaks in the center of the miraculous

We were the free in freedom

Before the division of the sexes

Before Love was kidnapped & Romance commodified

We danced before roles were written in stone

And my Spirit danced around yours

I was unrestrainable & we were too big to be contained

We were the real deal

The real definition

Of the meaning of what Love is supposed to be about

You & me . . . two sides of the same Vibration

Compatible opposites

In a harmonious composite of the true unification

Of the one

We were here & there & we were everywhere

All at the same time

Little microscopic infinitesimal points if light

Pure life invisibly vibrating in this Universe

While it was still devoid of the perversions of War & guilt

And murder & rape were inconceivable Sins, but hardly Original

And before

Living in shame of every kind of nakedness became an unholy duty

And greed became the only acceptable Truth

Propagated by greedy fools

Who had the nerve to declare theirs the only Rule

The unbreakable Rule for everyone else but themselves to live by

We were there

Offspring of another Dimension

And we danced

Resplendently wrapped in the exquisite beauty

Of all the colors

Of each & every Rainbow that had ever been

We were Nature’s smile

Gardens prayed to the Rhythm of our tears

And got drunk on the Musical euphoria of our Vibrations

Dizzy from our spinning, but

Spinning & spinning we danced

We danced

Before our fullness intimidated the emptiness

And the destruction of Peace was considered natural

A long time before the power of joy instilled fear in the joyless

And the always changing, constant motion of Existence

Terrified the already petrified

We were there

Before cowardly fear of the unknown ate the spiritually blind alive

And the Universe

Regurgitated the sadness of their negativity

Spit it all out

Into some faraway Intergalactic compost pile

Just another mound of fertilizer lost in Time

And we were there

Listening

Witnessing as we danced

A couple of brazen Cosmic Peep Freaks

Watching the rebirth of Nature’s phenomenal true unification

The inevitable re-pollination

Of the One

Watching

As It reaches out (as It always does) & pulls Itself together

And then It all begins

Again & again & again

SOUNDLY METAPHYSICAL
by Avotcja

My Music is

An orgasmic synonym for all that is real

An organic vibrational healing

A sanctified tone Poem

I deal in sound

Call me a Meta-Physician, a Doctor of Sound

Another edition on the ladder of tradition

Another one of those trying to be spiritual Music nuts

Pushing a hundred percent natural medicine

Melodic medicine

Non-toxic cures from B-flat to High C

I got a Music Jones that won't let go

It's a heavy Gift

A Zora Neale Hurston/Jose Montoya Wordsong

A Gift to lift us

A healthy intoxicant that's stronger than Drugs

An ever-expanding ritual "fix"

That's everywhere ... all the time

Music is the Song that sings me

That flows through me

The Song that is me

Music is the funk in a Joe Cuba Tune

Duke Ellington's Mistress

The Bee that bites in Betty Carter's "Bop"

The blood in my veins

Poetic Music is the air I breathe

The heart of every dream I dream

Sound so strong I can see it

Can you hear it? ... Feel it???

I've got to know if you ever even noticed it

Music's calling ... It's always talking

Calling you ... calmly

Inviting you as sensually as a caress

Holding you warmly ... hauntingly

Desperately like a scream

Music is a unifier

The one sure thing that brings this world together

The only universal language

Music is a brazenly unrepentant flirt

Comes speaking sweetly Teasing, swinging & talking Jive

In every idiom that's ever been

A language so strong even the deaf can taste it

Are you listening??? It's begging you to heal?

Music & the Music of the Word is medicine

A Poetic Musician is a traditional Healer

And I'm a Dealer, a Meta-Physician who deals in Sound

Medicinal Sound ... it's the only "High" I'm pushing

And right now I feel a healing coming on

Anybody out there want some???

“MATTER IS & WERE ALWAYS PART OF IT” and “SOUNDLY METAPHYSICAL” are on the CD MATTER IS by ELECTRIC SQUEEZEBOX ORCHESTRA (a 17 piece Jazz Band) They are also in my new book of Poetry & Short Stories "OAKTOWN MOSAICS / PURA CANDELA (PURE FIRE)” coming out soon!

Wishing you all Bright Moments

www.Avotcja.org

Reflections
More Origin Stories

Kheven and I have been friends for a long time. He helped me raise my girls. There were these African American soldiers in Oakland, Kheven among them who were like strong moral pillars a single mother could lean on. When I was at Holy Names, Kheven let me do my Philosophy of Film—Death and Dying homework at his house. I didn’t own a TV or VCR. I remember he’d let me into the apartment, show me how to work the VCR and then go to bed. He’d get up and walk me to my car when I was finished with my homework. My mother bought me a TV when I graduated from Holy Names. I still have it. The VCR started eating my tapes.

When he retired from the Port of Oakland, he began to write and curate full time. He has had edited a collection of essays on Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and his play, “The Legend of Pink” was produced by Theatre Rhinoceros. His “Growing Up Black in San Francisco” exhibitions in collaboration with Jarrel Phillips, his nephew, were highly acclaimed.

Kheven Lee LaGrone reflects on the African American Poetry Celebration

I was surprised when Wanda announced the 31st anniversary of her poetry celebration. I remember her excitement when thinking about the first celebration. Not many people went to poetry readings. I assumed her celebration would be like most readings, a few people would come eager to read their poetry. A few others would reluctantly read. A couple of people would come to socialize. But Wanda asked me to help, so I did.

She picked the West Oakland library because it was her neighborhood library. However, West Oakland would be the perfect place for the event. It is an old established Black neighborhood. It had historical architecture. It has a history of Black activism. The Poetry Celebration would honor that history.

In fact, the library faced DeFemery Park. The park was home to many Black Panther Party rallies and gatherings. This included a Free Huey rally in February 1968.

Later in 1968, 17-year old "Lil' Bobby Hutton" was the first Black Panther killed by the Oakland police. He became a martyr for the Black Power Movement. In 2016, a part of the park was officially named Lil' Bobby Hutton Memorial Park.

On the day of the Wanda's first poetry celebration, I walked into the library. To my surprise, the auditorium was packed. The event was lively. Many people signed up to read their poetry. They read the work passionately. The audience listened passionately. The poetry celebrated "blackness." It reflected the liberating, self-defining work of the 1960s and ‘70s. In fact, many of the poets came from that period. Young people also read their poetry, showing their connection to the past.

The reading became an annual event. The attendance grew every year. Over the years, I had to stand in the back of the auditorium or even outside in the lobby if I arrived late. It became an annual uplifting cultural event and not just a poetry reading. People dressed up for the event in their African garb. People played drums. Vendors sold Black history books. Organizers passed out flyers of other events in the Bay Area. Black visual artists displayed and sold their Afrocentric artwork.

Every year, the Poetry Celebration kicked off my Black History Month celebrations. It became my yearly homecoming.

Looking back, I had no idea that we would still be celebrating the 31st year anniversary of the Poetry Celebration. It is now part of West Oakland's, and Oakand's, Black history.

Ourselves Walking

Ann Marie Davis

There were those of us

who awoke one day

to find ourselves

on a mountain pass walking.

There were those of us

whose breath caught in our chests

as the ground crumbled

from footprints we made.

And there were those of us

who heard roaring

of boulders and twigs and leaves

in the valleys

and gorges below us

fallen from places

where we had tread.

There were those of us

who didn’t stop walking.

There were those of us

who wanted to know how we got there

who had many questions.

Why must this happen?

Why can’t life just be fair?

There were those of us

who picked up one foot

and then placed it down again

and then soldiered on,

and then cowboyed up

with a stiff upper lip

There were those of us

who trudged.

There were those of us

who went on still

and after a while

let our questions and grumbles

float from the place

in front of our mouths

and sway to the ground

like falling oak leaves

to rest on the path.

There were those of us

who let go the huge questions

to go mostly unanswered

as they collapsed into dust.

There were those of us

who looked behind us

to find that the road

had been turned into rubble.

There were those of us

who kept walking through

though cussing and mumbling

but nonetheless walking

without missing a beat.

There were those of us

who looked to the left of us

for the mountain top

to see only its brambleberries

hanging from its ridges

holding its secrets

away from our sight.

There were those of us

who looked to the right of us

and saw in the distance

to where the sky meets horizons.

And there were those of us

who looked there and saw

a million lands

of stoic and golden

sunlit grasses

creviced by rivers

on their million-year journeys

to oceans.

And there were those of us

who then listened and heard

the savannas of ages

humming their time and time again chant.

That same earth-old chant

that rests in our throats

and sings us

to ever and ever, amen.

There were those of us who wandered

to the edge of the precipice

and reckoned the place

where all the lands started

was the same place

at the foot of the mountain

where we planned out our journey

when we knew what our plan was;

to go up the mountain

and look and see

what we might see

that we could not see

from the place that was

where we stood back then.

There were those of us who saw

that the places where our feet

had been meeting the earth

was rough-hewn

and tortured with roots.

There were those of us

who saw the road change

as that piece of time passed

that occurs as we touch

our foot to the earth.

We saw as the mountain pass

changed to a path

made of bricks

made of gold like the road

in the fable in the book

that we read years ago

as young children

who believed that our lives

were like worlds that were things

that we endlessly, earnestly, mightily

conjured from dreams.

There are those of us

who awake each day

to find ourselves

on a mountain pass.

Walking.

Six Lifetimes of Love

Ann Marie Davis

I vow to see who you are

completely and without fail

for this life

and five lifetimes after.

If you come back as a spider

and I come back as your mate,

even as I devour you

I will hold my abdomen

with two of my eight legs

and rock back and forth for a while

as I digest you

because I will

miss you already.

And if I come back as a clear-cut forest

and you come back as an industrialist

I will enter into your dreams

when I am fallen and made

into your four-poster bed.

And I will sigh into your aching heart

and that will be my gift to you:

a heart that can finally

be broken

because I will love you into that lifetime,

too.

And then you can be a squirrel

and I can be

the acorn

that falls at your feet

that you bury until winter.

And you can be the thirsty man

and I can be the rain.

And I can be the rain

and you can be the rainbow

that the people see.

Flat World

by Piet Bereal

Since the beginning

There was darkness, until there was light.

But what I see now

Is a World not so round;

Or so small

Not so beautifully bright.

Where’re you at?

Love is light out from darkness

-It shines.

Still, my World feels

More like a neglected,

Flipped-out pancake

Burn’n all day and night.

...and nearly

A less fictional fact

Less a myth or vicious rumor

When I think about

This World being ‘ hell’a‘ flat.

For example

People, places, animals of land, sea, and sky

I’ve loved intimately, respectfully;

In all spectrums of chemistry;

Must've slipped, plunged, been pushed

Off this 1-dimensional map;

Gone, disappeared just like that!

I miss you...wish you were here.

Will you ever bring your good works back?

Wherever you are, I’ll come swoop you up.

Even if you’re being detained at some undisclosed location

By anti-life, anti-human-Organization.

Maybe,

Like me, you dove deeper inside?

Exposed your inner mind

Transcended to the inner Divine?

Found your moral, spiritual compass

Shrunk your own footprint...-Downsized?

I mean...that’s cool, but do you even have a roof?

After them Twin Towers, Katrina

People of Color fall prey to

Predatory banks who will rob you to get back their dough...?

Repossessed, dispossessed like Game of Thrones

Do you at least have a tent; an Umbrella-ella-ella?

When COVID struck masked or not I hope you’re ok?

Too much debate about too little too late

For those who’ve fallen prey to miss-information.

Attacked from all sides include

World-wide Isolation

Mental health priority high

You have any long-term aggravation?

Hope you weren’t sucked into more salt, sugar

Alcoholic libations?

On a lighter note...

Did you witness?

All the ‘lil’ furry animals; big ones too

Who, got across a street and survived without

Loss of limb or their life...?

Clear Skies from the Bay for miles down to L.A.

Did you see?

Hope you didn’t blink?

For me, like world-wide wounded bodies of waters

-I took a long dive into reflection?

Just like shredded skies and manipulated soil

-Tried to detox from the constant polluted injections?

I felt highly favored for not having to shelter

With irritating family members.

Were you alone in a tiny home?

I hope you had loving company?

Did you go off the grid...stopped buying GMO’s?

Growing your own Greens and Grits?

Wait, do you even cook?

It’s important that you know

Life’s less flat with you to hold

You speak the Truth

And exude buoyancy

This world is so unimaginably different

Without you in it

You breathe upliftment...

Give words of encouragement

Show up tirelessly til the next day is risin’.

My World

Puffs up more and more,

In a downpour of restorative hues

Which is Why I’m still askin’

Where ya at? When ya coming back?

My hand extends an Olive branch

If that's what you're needing.

Without defeat 1, 2, 3

Fight the Power

Whatever hits and misses?

Since on to this pancake

While it flips

I'm still a' grippin.

This flaming, flat grittle’s hot...

No safety Net

For this Biblically-slippery-World

Pestilence

But...

I got chu,

Because you never quit.

So send a message,

It’s so dark here...

Spare

A little light,

Or even

‘Free’

Minute?

©November 2023

Le livre de la femme noire

The Black Woman Book

Gene Howell, Jr.

Just

standing there

while not looking for

eyes see the one

at the right angle

a little to the left

an effortless movement

of the squint.

I was introduced

quite by surprise

like my first breath

like first grade

addition tasks

and paging of fingers

to help me out.

A hardcover

a soft back

a dusky jacket

holding you by the spine

hands sometimes trace your fonts

towards purpose

inner form and inter-textual collage.

A leather bound folio.

Can I check you out?

Mental plane on the almanac

transport where chaos and order intersect

and one sees color and sound.

Sine-wave woven spectrums of divine clothe

cover a dimensional chiffarobe.

Never back, always forward

not to be busted up, not to be

put down.

Height, width, depth, concepts and truth

of understanding cleave

within your collating.

Can I check you out?

Curl up and you

stack it straight

dream book style.

Excursionist number the manifest;

they include

Lerone Bennett Jr., John Hope Franklin, JA Rodgers,

Ida B Wells, Dr. Yosef ben Jochannan, Chancellor Williams

Frances Cress Welsing, James Baldwin, H.G.Wells

Cheikh Diop, Herbert Aptheker

Vincent Harding, Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore...et al

I walk in their shoes like footnotes

...with black strap molasses to

the senses and sensibility

under a handsome volume

moot and mute at first

like notes of Barbados rum.

Can I check you out?

2-3-2017

A Hot Friend Cooling

Moor Kin, then Kenmore

Gene Howell, Jr.

Diamonds in your crown

Like calendar tray the days

Diamonds in your crown

Arranged not by pressure

But from molecules

slowed down

Taking time out

from their busy schedule

like coloring Nubian nights

To explore and flirt

decide to sit awhile.

Ice.

Nice.

Right.

Place where vegetables been

and fish and chicken

leftover film of memory and corsage.

Inside eggs coolin'

milk chillin'

jell-o jigglin'

peaches ready to cling

but brie stay hard

NOT ready for take-out

because there's crackers awaiting

their crumble dance

in the final analysis.

There is no room for the cottage cheese!

Unlike others, I understand your coldness

like the promenade

of a single presentation

of a pomegranate blossom

drawn on papyrus paper at a prominent place;

like room sixty-five at the British museum.

You have the floor in this discussion

late night hum of percussion

pulling from under me

the chair of my university.

NOT Valerie Simpson silly.

Your Light

shines most

When we are open.

Prepare my notes in the dark.

Does that make me smart?

That's just how I am.

I can tell cassava from yam.

Could tell you more special that the rest

When I saw your presentation in Architectural Digest.

Four equal sides sway forth and obsidian

To my inquisitive out and in

You are upright, I don't have to bend.

We now know when we know

we shine when are doors are un-closed.

Unlike others, I understand your coldness.

2/3/2017

CoalPorter

By Gene Howell, Jr.

Notes that find destination

Follow trane on tracks

Paths of feather'd rain

Woman with valise

when most have baggage.

We men are Porters,

Union of brothers

Pulling life burdens

Pullman, Pullman! Pullman?

Eyes left

Eyes right!

In Puskin meter

Run fast...........run hare fast....Russian.

Chappy and happy

Snaps in the kitchen.

Stop calling George.

The name is George.

The name is not of the

George Washingtons, but

of the George Washington

Runaways.

See the limp

And the need to manage time and movement

In the dance of stolen moments.

Of the night and ofay.

And not rush water and dust,

but to find ourselves,

And assume some proper posture

and a place matte meet.

Our hair makes us nap kin.

Viewed small on America's table cloth.

Forks on the left

Knife on the right

and a straight razor in the pocket

for South Bend Indiana.

2/3/2017

I set a Black Table

Do you know my place?

Gene Howell Jr.

01.02.2020

Not of Western folks fable,

I’ve setup three black tables.

One paying homage to my ancestors,

Whispered to me like August Wilson’s Aunt Ester.

Second, the beauty and power of all things Black,

Steeped in holy sprits and unrefutable fact.

Third, I cleve from Where We’s be At,

Points on the globe we can thumb tack.

I set a Black table

Do you know my place?

Within the crevices of my spirtual plateau,

These tables I honor on what I now do know.

In this, my movement and moment in time,

Where certain sine wave and spirits shine.

I set a Black table

Do you know my place?

To show the world what I honor in these 14 plates.

See and look, look and see and take no mistakes.

Illuminate Howell, Jefferson, Johnson and Lomax.

Moving the bloodline forward, not back.

I set a Black table

Do you know my place?

Another table, where everything more black than blue.

And like the meaning of “soul” it’s there too.

Black flowers, black glasses and black plates.

Arch-weld and armed lace love black, not hate.

I set a Black table

Do you know my place?

Migration of a slowed pace and relieved haste,

We commune like others in co-operative taste

Set from a distance a very black table

Nourish a body and feed the soul you are able.

I am a Black table

In the here

And in the now.

Write in Oakland

by Gene Howell

Writing. Write. It is not that my writing begins in Oakland. It is my reading collection and my engagement in the social struggles within current U.S. borders in a city, like Oakland, that fuels this “creative evolution.”

When I was part of Edna Crutchfield’s International Black Writers and Artist Local 5 in Oakland (IBWA); I for a time served as president. I would always say that poetry is the foundation of all writing. I would also remind everyone that authoritarian regimes locked up the poets first. It is the gathering of experience, knowledge and interaction on “the boards” of life that you cleave writing.

In my youth, three poems loomed large. Two Roads by Robert Frost, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman and Tree by Joyce Kilmer. Those poems invaded the core of “americana psyche” back then. What was relevant for me was something else.

My discernment, my “road” as my father lay passed out and drunk in his weekend performances of “abv improvisational coping” was to either step over him or step around him in a protocol deserving of this coup de théâtre. I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. That decision smells, like feet that suffered severe frost-bite serving the country in 1950's Korea and it not declared a disability.

What was the practical knowledge razed from Leaves of Grass? St. Augustine’s grass was thick and bulky; Johnson’s grass was wild and invasive and the other “popular grazer” Grass grass was just “wacky tobaccy.”

Trees? My tree’s. Lifting palms of her hands to the sky, her natural hair mirror the endless universe and yet its beauty is reflected on you Black woman. Black men call to mind and rise timber.

Resting on the carpet of the family living room, where one entered only with purpose or guests; crystal glassware, ceramic knick-knacks stood post around plastic covered furniture. Most times when I entered and layed on the floor with shoes removed, it was to listen to records. We had a Magnavox color tv-stereo combo. I could feel transported from where I was, when I listened to my introduction to jazz with Miles Davis playing on “Sketches of Spain.” Sometimes I listened to “I am the Greatest” by Cassius Clay. Was that young Cassius with a set of Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedias on the cover? Rhyming is so cool! Everyone enjoyed reading in my family except for my father. I think he saw books as pets. He would give my Mom static when she bought books, new or used. Maybe he was afraid the house would become a “book menagerie” and the house would be covered with book marks. One evening I saw a new album with a man on the cover with horn-rimmed glasses and a chess-board jacket. He had a last name that I remembered trying to solve for in junior high school algebra. It was called “Ballots or the Bullets.” His razor-sharp voice boomed from the speakers. This “elocution-in-the-parlor” would later spark my reading of the “Autobiography of Malcolm X”, then “Before the Mayflower” and then yes, “The Kerner Report.”

My uncle Edward suggested I read “Black Fire” by Leroi Jones and Larry Neal. His good friend Audbry Labrie had written an essay in this book filled with new voices in the form of poetry, essays and short plays. This book became the codex of the “Black Arts Movement” and the “black-print” to what I was going to do artistic.

Joining my high school Black Students Union I became the Minister of Culture. I thought I was ready to write poetry, but never thought of reading out loud to others. When I later attended the College of Alameda (COA), I was able to read out loud and had a few poems published in “The Greasy Star” published by my Creative Writing professor Jon Ford; who later started Poetry Flash newspaper for poets in the bay area. Also, at COA I started playwriting with my play “Shadow of the Flame” thanks to the encouragement of Dr. Barabara Burton in her African American Experience class.

It is with my experiences with IBWA, a touchstone for so many bay area artist and writers and the welding of the writing to the performing. From the many readings and pot-lucks and special quests, the venues from Victor’s Café, Listen and be heard and my own Fireback: Poetry on the Waterfront at Barnes and Noble at Jack London Square, it’s that yearly event, the first Saturday in February starting in 1990 that holds a special place for me and the Black artist community of the Bay area. It would be an understatement to say magic happens there every year. It is a “Celebration of African-American History through Poetry at the West Oakland Library” founded and hosted by Wanda Sabir. She also follows Ida B Wells in the quest of the writer/journalist and activist. Wanda is also a member of IBWA.

When my sons were young I brought them to many of the early days of the readings. I’ve seen poets of all ages. The poetry, the joy, the pain, the commitment, the cool, and the swag. If you don’t see the colors of this rich connective tissue, Wanda has created pick up a book, someone may have hidden it there. Along with others in the community, this is truly amazing...sans the Luther Vandross stutter.

Brick House Women

Ayodele N’Zinga, Ph.D.

brick house women

don't dream God they

dream of the ocean

walking on water

through fire

of rising

like mist over rivers

overcoming with the sunrise

standing up when the sun sets

when they dream of

falling they then dream

flying without wings

they dream

solutions miracles

with eyes open

pray with

hands moving

only go forward

brick house women

endure

cracks in the wall

water rising

sky falling

the world on fire

they endure

like music

like the smell

of dirt after rain

like flowers

in the desert

they are the foundation

on which we

build brick houses

standing after storm

last house on the block

make you wanna

hollar in between

trying to make life

brick house

built on rocky ground

still standing

brick house women

endure

Brick House Sunrise

Ayodele N’Zinga, Ph.D.

open the curtains

in the brick house

let the light spill in

peeling back the dark

illuminating broken things

scattered like litter on the side of

life the broken dolls

games that glitch

the only for this side of town

bag of mismatched chances a

keyboard with missing keys

a greasy box of half

sentences missing verbs

near a pile of half-lives

lived in shadows waiting for something

that may never come straining to hear

music that may never be played

knowing things are missing

but not able to name them

empty hands reaching

restless after stagnation

pressed down and unstable

dawn breaks

sun rises

Triggers
by Ayodele N'Zinga, Ph.D.

i am from the school of

small axes

of the days

when the most violent

write the letter of the law

the law often a faithless mistress

combines to chalk line my boundaries

forgetting who pushed who first

or legitimizing it

complicit in the minefield of my life

enabling the infamous

wearing black robes

white robes

sometimes in scarlet robes

over brooks brothers suits

all the same in their effect

to stones the builder rejects

tethered in halls of injustice

after being dismissed

after pouring growing planting

the foundation

of the crooked house

outside which i sit

fully loaded

rife with triggers

explosive in the conjured myth

informed by action word deed

and the reality of living in the land

of the lawless triggered by reckless lips

using english like a club

toxic ink on cotton

with jim crow's shadow reinventing itself

in the dust of my steps

i got triggers

if i ain't got nothing else

side eye shade interpreted with acuity

fluent in non verbals

subliminal

and lapses in consciousness

and yes you meant that

don't take it back

because you realize

the safety is off

bare reality ain't got filters

i got triggers

can smell the call

will answer it

give you your nightmare without hesitation

i have risen not forgotten

we can get low

i know the steps

wrote some of the songs

you sure you want to sing along

i got triggers

will pull belive that

send you to meet your maker

before i let you send me to mine

i am a retired slave

been done been unruly

was never suited for oppression

so i stood up

don't try to ride my back

i got triggers

you try to put me on my knees

you find out i squeeze

blow you back to where you came from

have you scratching your life

with your good hand

trying to figure out what comes next

i got triggers

i decipher intention in deed word and text

on the look-out for nappy nets

easily vexed

don't test

i got triggers

lions and gerillas

here

riding in the storm

fully loaded

come for me

i answer the door

if you didn't want

war what you pull up for

reciprocity is a religion

catch me wrong

i serve what i am given

i got triggers

The Death of Innocence
by Ayodele N'zinga, Ph.D.

the innocence that wrote

love poems and captured beauty

like life could be kept

fire-flied in a bottle

fled slowly/ leaving pragmatism

on the dresser in a shade of

clouded jade there is little

to say of love or beauty both

fade or die loud or silent deaths

suffocated under life/ which is

funkier that you imagine in

innocence where optimism lives

precariously perched on pearly possibilities

possible always looks smaller in rear view

mirrors/ the reason appears larger

in rooms where torches have passed

memories demand attention guiding

action and inaction where is

innocence we are all baptized in the blood

we are Emmett Till, we are Amadou Diallo,

we are Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown

we are legion too many names

for innocence to remain

we know/ someone must speak

the blood the teeth with swords

screaming vengeance balancing scales

sand weighed against blood

no ink can hold this travesty

this cotton fueled feud sprung

out of the ocean raids that

made warriors slaves no ink

can hold the truth bound twisted

buried invisible/ we know because

we remember we do not have

to be told any more than the bones

say we need know no more than the

dust knows the dust knows all it

says there is no innocence just

blindness we know/ knowing

writes different poems it knows

the salt of the tale refuses to

be distracted it knows listens to

the bones remembers

struggle it knows sweat persistence

ingenuity longs for even ground on

which to stand knows forward knows

storm knows blues

knows it knows so it breaths fire/

wont be quiet or still no harmonics

in chaos three eyes on the prize

fire on the water poems

dust and bone poems that talk

back to cotton vowing to un-write

ink and remember being born

free with dignity and everything

poems that sing harvest songs

written by old women who

dream the bones remembering

knowing so we know

I want to write a poem

By Douglas Coleman

August 23, 2019

I want to write a poem

That resonates in the hearts and minds

Like the sound of ten thousand Djembe Drummers

Drumming the same rhythm at the same time in the same place

Listening to it bounce and pop off the peaks and slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro

Gliding down its massive sides and out on to the lands below

Encapsulating the people in a oneness

Like magnificent unfolding florals of endless colors

Rising up with the vibrancy of Greens Yellows Reds

Whirling mixing forming all the colors of the spectrum

Filling the mind like the expanse of the universe

Visual senses expand like a nuclear explosion

That spreads from horizon to horizon

All spiraling out of an infinitesimal black dot

While food aromas fills the nostrils

Paints the palate with great promises

Mouthwatering anticipation of succulence

The licking of lips

Widening of the eyes

The ever demanding stomach

Tethered to the aromas

Just dancing the night away

In a hot reggae dancehall

Feeling the beat and heat of the room

As pulsating jumping twisting dipping

Energized bodies respond to the driving music

Bass drum and scratchy guitar

Producing that energy of gaiety and blissful joy

Like the rush of a mighty tsunami

That sweeps away many of the current things

While laying the foundation for the new

Scrubbing the mind of falsehoods and lies

That holds captive the spirit of Self

Holding firm to remnants of the sacred

That feeds our hopes dreams and visions

A poem of bliss and contentment

That washes over you like a calming breeze

Like a meditative trance

Filling you with the knowing

Of things previously unknown

That hardens our resolve

To be free and restored

Yea I want to write a poem

REFUEL ME

Be not dismayed my aching heart

Bruised and broken by society

Frustrated, insulted and grieving

Matted within the uncertainty of your destiny

Instead my sacred rhythmic engine

Continue expanding and contracting resiliently

Like the mighty motors within your persistent ancestry

Remain strong

Carry-on

I understand that you've frayed with age, still I need you to function unafraid

Retaining your intuitions

Releasing your inhibitions

Courageous and ambitious, conquering the conditions

Absorb all that you can to fortify your greatness

Embracing life lessons no matter how heavy, or weightless

Allow your love lake to fill and overflow

Creating cascading fountains everywhere you go

And trust in God's presence, for you are of Divine essence

Your wounds will heal

Your purpose will reveal

Causing you to question no more what you are here for

So be encouraged

Focus on glory

Determined to complete your unique story

And don’t you dare stop voluntarily!

You hear me?

But proceed audaciously

Pumping

Beating

Resting at every given opportunity

To regain your energy, because see...

We're bound together on this journey

And unfortunately, no matter how coarse this course may be...

I need you to thrive, baby

In compromise, I'll provide you with nourishment to remain healthy

Because as long as we're alive

I'm relying on you, Dear Heart

To fuel me.

A Black Man’s Prayer

Dear God,

If you have placed a curse on Pharaoh, please remove it.

Because Old Pharaoh was an ancestor of mine.

And the ones who taught me Pharaoh’s curse have bade me

To leave the thoughts of their ancestral wrongs behind.

If you have placed a curse on Satan, please remove it.

They made their Satan black and strong to look like me.

Then they told me that they took you, which somehow doesn’t ring quite true.

So please God, from their curses set me free.

I have been taught to curse my ancestors and images.

It seems to entertain the ones who love to curse.

God please release me from their love of my destruction.

Restore the peace and love you gave to me at birth.

Please do not curse the ones who nurtured cursing in me.

And do not curse those who enslaved me in their fields.

Curse not even those who steal my soul with drugs, booze and brutality.

They don’t need your curses, God. They need to heal.

I call both You and me in names that sound so foreign.

From foreign lands in many foreign tongues I call.

Sometimes I wonder what I’m saying God. Does it make any sense?

God, it’s “Amazing Grace” that I can speak at all.

Free me from their need to curse and exploit scapegoats

And from their cotton-pickin’ prison industries.

Show me the Peaceful One these killers claim to worship.

They think it’s them. I know it’s You. So set me free.

Manifest this heart of mine with freedom, peace and love

Unbounded by the curse of their deserted virtues.

Help me walk Your way again and speak to all as if to friends.

Your peace and healing are some things we all could use.

Amen

Black People Need A Bomb

Black people need a bomb, y’all.

Black people need a nuclear bomb. That’s right.

India got Gandhi,

And they got a bomb too.

China got Buddha,

And they got a bomb too.

Pakistan got Muhammad,

And they got a bomb too.

Israel got Moses

And they got a bomb too.

White people got Jesus,

And more bombs than other people do.

Black people got white people,

So we close our eyes and pray.

Lord, black people need a bomb, y’all.

Black people need a nuclear bomb. That’s right.

White people get mad

When other people get bombs.

White people get so mad,

They say, “We’re gonna kill you.”

Other people with bombs reply,

“What else is new?

The next time that you kill on us,

We’re gonna kill you too.”

Black people need a bomb, y’all.

Black people need a nuclear bomb. That’s right.

Negate affirmative action.

Drop white education.

Stop integration.

We won’t need jobs,

If we get a working bomb!

Black people need a bomb, y’all.

Black people need a nuclear bomb. That’s right.

Don’t give it to the brothers.

Brothers just talk.

But a sister just glances

When she’s had enough.

And everybody knows,

It’s time to quit that stuff.

If black women had a bomb

We would get respect,

Except of course for brothers

In arrears on child support.

Black people need a bomb, y’all.

Black people need a nuclear bomb. That’s right.

Fallout is in

Black people need a bomb

With glowing skin

Black people need a bomb

With just one bomb

Black people need a bomb

All problems gone

Black people need a bomb

With enough bombs

Black people need a bomb

We’ll be white too

Black people need a bomb

Kill lots of folks

Black people need a bomb

Destroy their land

Black people need a bomb

Steal their resources

Black people need a bomb

We’ll be The Man!

Black people need a bomb, y’all

Black people need a nuclear bomb. That’s right.

But we don’t have a bomb

Because we won’t get together

And sell our soul

To get one….

Black people got soul, y’all

We are the bomb.

The Apology (from Mother)

By Nicia De'Lovely

I suppose anytime is the best time for an apology

So please accept this moment of honesty and humility

My child...

In an era that I wish never existed

They

Them

Those... White folk

Objectified black bodies like abused commodities

It needn't be explained

That the black woman's womb is constantly under attack while simultaneously in demand

But I'd like you to understand...

This land... Is just as much rightfully yours as that pain

Wherever your tired, sore, sweaty, swollen feet meet the earth

Know that your many great mothers

Toiled that soil restlessly

Straight through pregnancy

Often times with you laboring beside me

Though more frequently missing you indescribably

Mourning you

Slaving through blindly, behind eyes so misty

Only daring to breathe for the dream of seeing you again

I'm sorry!

It was neeever my will to separate from your being

And never, even in my most rebellious dreams

Did I ever willingly release my reproductive rights, nor your life

You-

The fresh, hopeful pieces of me were taken involuntarily

Only to be mistreated as property by the indecency of European patriarchy

I NEVER!

Wanted you- my fruit, introduced to the colonial hate that subjugated me

They turned life into a trade

So even when compassion played a part in conception...

They sold the love that we made

THERE IS NO HUMANITY IN SLAVERY!

Yet man tortured us to slave breed!

The whole institution stole the sweetness from our souls

To sustain economically we were forced-forced-forced to procreate through systemic rape

Black wombs- my womb

Became tombs of apathy

Misused to populate an industry built off the muscle of Black bodies

Turning our seeds into machines

Creating generations of degradation and lost identity

Please Accept My Apology!

With it I give you my strength

My stamina, my faith- my magic and my resilient spirit

Forgive me for the fury in your veins

But just the same

Use it to shine-spark and ignite flames

Use it to run

Use it fly

Use it to glow and light up the sky

Be the wind that I prayed for so frequently and passionately

Be the JOY that would encompass me everytime I thought of liberty

Forgive me for loving you so hard that I didn't want you to ever experience any of the agony that I felt and you were dealt...Within my womb

But be the joy

The peace

The love

The healing

The hallelujah and the glory

Be the blood that shed

The history read

The great change

And the final story

Be the freedom

That you were meant to be

For both you

And for me.

Beginning...

With my apology.

I love you.

Artist Bio:

Oakland, CA native Nicia De'Lovely is an acclaimed published poet, creative, multifaceted artist, anti-child molestation/ CSEC advocate, community servant and spirited survivor. Her independent production, “Nicia De'Lovely Presents,” creates provocative survivor-based performances for education and healing of sexual trauma, earning her a 2019 Best of the Fringe Award for her solo show, "GET UNCOMFORTABLE."

Black and Blue Bloods

Joy Elan

Every Black child was instilled to be afraid of the police

Not to trust them and don't expect them to help you

Most Black parents used to say to their child

If they wanted them to behave

"You better act right before I call the police on you"

We knew the police put bad guys away

But if our own parents said that

Then we must've been very bad

Afraid to walk down the street when they slowed down while driving by

"Are they coming after me?" we would think

Then they would keep going and we would let out a huge sigh of relief

The police came to our classes to speak to us

Most children wanted to be cops because the TV shows made it look hot

The police were acting buddy buddy with us

But what were they really doing once they were on patrol?

What do we feel when we see that officer from our class

Arresting our family member or someone we know?

That trust is broken and gone

Remember when we watched Rodney King being beat up by cops

We were confused why they were beating on that man like that

And when the cops were not convicted, we learned that they were the untouchables

No matter how corrupt they were, they would never get in trouble

Forget the Bloods and Crips

I'm talking about Blue Bloods

The police force is one of the biggest and powerful gang there is

Right under the US government

If one cop dies, you'll get a bunch of rogue cops trying to take you down

Don't give a shit what happens to them

They have to teach us a lesson to remind us who's the boss

Taught at an early age that they can't be trusted

We carry that with us forever

Not all cops are bad but most of them collect a paycheck and go home in their nice suburban homes

Don't give back to the community they work in

They take and leave

Drop things off in our communities and watch us die over it

Don't plan to do anything until we're all gone

And they can slowly move back in and take over

The police are the KKK with blue uniforms and German Shepherds

The ropes became handcuffs

Lynchings became a free for all open fire and chokeholds

They get off free by saying they thought the suspect had a weapon

Anything we say against them is null and void

We're stuck watching them take over

Praying that we're not going to become victims of police violence

Black and blue from the people who bleed blue

Red blood stains on streets

Where bullet holes punctured our skin, forcing us to bleed out

With no sirens from the ambulance to save us

Even they know they can't save someone who was shot by the police

They would be betraying their alliance

Losing control to stop an officer or three from rushing in to make sure the suspect/victim dies

We've seen and heard enough cop stories to know how it goes down

Once you're a police academy graduate, you belong to them

The worse gang in all of the United States.

BLACK BOY: JOY AND TEARS

Monique Reneé Harris

Black Boy, when I came home

I saw a little black baby boy

lying in the arms of our mother

JOY

Black Boy, when you fell and hurt your knees

TEARS

Black Boy, when you flew down the street

riding the back of my wheelchair

or when you grew and we flew down the street in a car

JOY

Black Boy, when I left home and lost sight of you everyday

because I needed to leave and live my life

TEARS

Black Boy, when we hung out and talked about the little people

and how we respect them

JOY

Black Boy, when people gawked at your dreads and condemned you

without knowing who you are

they should feel your heart

TEARS

Black Boy, when we cruised to Santa Cruz

you tilted my wheelchair down the steps

so I could touch the sand

even though your back twinged

JOY AND TEARS

Black Boy, when I phoned you

and Mom could not wake you

I screamed, “Please try!”

but Mom could not wake you

TEARS

34 million tears for 34 years

for Black Boy

JOY FOREVER

IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

Makeda Esi

it is the midnight hour,

when Love comes

he is

brave,

blue

and

tall like a tree

when he smiles the air gets thin

he "is" Music

pen pressed against

my art

i am the lullaby he writes

the strings and cords

he strums

the notes that bless

the air

I am the ebony on ivory

under the spell

of fingers

that stroke

till the black keys

scream.

He keeps the beat

I keep the time

time

passing by

running out

this is no elegy

but

a rendering

a telling

a surrender

a divine sacrifice

to Love

who called me out

uttered words

better left unsaid.

heard my

tears before

I cried

Only to rewrite this

impossible story.

The Night Before Christmas

Makeda Esi

This offering is for the baby boys who

grow up and become saviors.

And for the teenage girls who

deliver

light into the darkness

alone

for the women who die without knowing real love for themselves because they give it all away to others.

For the girls whose innocence was stolen

before they could say

yes or no.

For the ride or die angels/friends who will deliver a baby if they have to.

And for the church girls who were kicked out for being pregnant.

for the mamas who stayed no matter what and for the ones who couldn't stay too.

The night before Christmas.

This is the story of the birth of a baby born to a teenager,

Who said an angel revealed to her that she would deliver a boy whose life

would transform and bring light to the world.

They would call him

Messiah

Son of the Most High

King of Kings

Oh Holy night!

Luke described it as a night unlike any other. The stars were shining brightly in the sky

shepards were minding sheep in the field the magi from nubia was following a star toward a miracle.

Excitement was in the atmosphere, there was hope for peace on earth and good will to all. it was going to be new day.

Oh night divine

Hidden between the lines of scripture is what really went down that night. It is a preposterous story of a young pregnant, unmarried, teenage girl who claimed to be a virgin. The scribe writes that on this night she rode a donkey 106 miles from the village of Nazareth to Bethlehem with her boyfriend Joseph. By the time they arrived she was in labor, Joseph combed the city for shelter but there were no rooms available. Unaware this teenager cradled the Light of the world in her womb the innkeepers said

“We have no room”

Oh night when Christ

was born

we have

imagined an enchanting

snowy

winter night complete with shepherds

trees toys

and little drummer boys.

but it does not snow

Bethlehem

And it was not a silent night

this was her first child

And her mama was not there

and her boyfriend was not allowed

She labored there in a cave that was not tidy and clean like the sweet nativity scene that graces our mantle and looks so serene

Ohhh nooo

it was

a tearful

lonely

bloody

scene

Oh night when Christ was

born

It is written

that as she labored through the night

an angel came

If we are awake, we can all testify to a moment when we just could not take it anymore and somebody shows up

An Angel

I can imagine some woman passing by and coming upon this crazy scene stopping to help a young girl in distress

And as dawn broke she gave birth to a baby boy who would be called

Emanuel

King of Kings

Savior

And they wrapped him in strips of cloth torn from his mother’s dress and laid him there upon her breast.

And a heavenly choir lifted their voices . . .

Fall on your knees

Oh hear the Angel's singing

Oh night when Christ was born.

And there was Joy that morning

Tonight we celebrate the birth of

Yesuaha

this story is not outdated

Light is born into the world every day. Every day is new. And we are called to be angels who show up and help deliver light into the world.

Let your light be blinding.

"A SONNET FOR ALAINA"

Tracee Coltes

The life you live

The path you chose

The joys

The triumphs

The long drawn-out blues

The laughter

The despair

The challenges

The fears

The life you live

The path you choose

White crisp shirt

Black patent shoes

The life you live

The path you choose

Magnetta coat covers Mocha Sienna Chocolate hues

The life you live

The path you choose

Loud hollow sounds mark dreams unused

The life you live the path you choose

Little girl you are made of grown woman's blues

"A PRAYER FOR HARLEM"

You were conjured

From fragments of our yesteryears

Where birthed indigos and warriors reigned

Preservers of our life force

They have arrived

The vultures

Feasting off our sacred alter

Carousing for our essence

Absorbing our inheritance

Integration is a venom

Silencing truth

Eradicating all authenticity

Manufacturing zombies

Zora chants the war cry

The sound vibrates throughout yonder

Beckoning Langston Josephine Malcolm

The elders

Libation is needed

We will not become a thought in the book of remembrance

Dear Dear Harlem

Ashe Ashe

Forgive us

As we forgive' those that trespass against us

To QR Hand a dear friend, (1937? 38 – 1/1/21)

by Kathryn Waddell Takara, PhD

Smoky sighs.

I remember QR? Not fully..

Spring 1962

We met at Yale and connected charged

At a NSM conference, civil rights struggle for Northern students

He was dashingly handsome

A red scarf tied around his tall neck

A beatnik character, unconventional

Looking like walking art with his trademark hat.

He was openly expressive, fiercely argumentative

Rhythmic and cool

Unfazed and self-confident in a sea of white faces.

1966. We met again in Berkeley, connected again.

QR was a mosaic of a man

Sharing multiple colors and patterns of life

Of ideas, friends, ethnicities, artists expressive

He was intellectual, analytical, complex and mostly unwavering.

Passionately political, stubborn yet warm

Outsider, observer of inequality, gentrification

Exposing the bowels of hypocritical leaders

Calling them out by name

Ever resistant to ignorant hate and to greed.

He always engaged with his friends.

He was a cultural wordsmith

A poet and critic defiant and fearless

Reciting history and politics

A teacher unforgettable, a champion of the dispossessed.

Fiercely independent

Reaching out “To The Poet in Man”

Communicative yet private

His words like jazz and the blues

Exalting, bemoaning

Thumping and bumping his personal unforgettable be-bob style

Cutting new images, atonal, afro-futuristic, inventive,

He challenged white power, our system inequitable and unjust.

Hard as a cowrie shell, rough as a coral reef

Inside soft like a sea urchin with a poisonous sting

He gave of himself freely, questioning authority

He asked, searched for the who, why, and what of conditions.

Who are you he asked, Who are they who lie so freely?

He knew who he was.

Ever a fighter, a rebel, a warrior

His weapon, the spoken and written word

Outlaw poetry he called it

He was a part of Black Fire and the Black Arts Movement

Inspirational to other poets and multitudes

Through decades of time, into the future.

His vision unwavering

Broad and tall like the redwoods

Deep as the Pacific

Delivering metaphors of the sea and shifting sands

Affable, available, he heard ancestral voices

Collaborative and expansive like music, like drumbeats

Courageous to share his singular path and philosophy

Of committment to justice, community, and growth.

QR, loyal and brilliant as the sunrise

Visible like moonlight

Or invisible like Casseiopia.

Unconcerned with personal wealth and status

He dedicated himself to opening doors of perception

New world connectedness

Social and environmental justice and balance

To health and diversity.

He often spoke in colors; black and white, brown, red and yellow

Splashes of humanity, citizens of our interconnected world.

His life he lived boldly

Drinking profusely, visiting bars, coffee houses and libraries galore

Intense as the seasons, predictable and not

Stormy as winter, gentle as springtime.

Finally, worn out by his efforts and lifestyle

He left us his smile and his humor in the season of Epiphany

Did he choose it, or just let go?

He left us a legacy of speaking one’s truth

Cultural and historical.

He still did not choose to fly in a plane.

He left us a challenging call for racial and economic equality

He left us a wishful message of unity and peace.

QR Hand. What a man! A mighty fine man

Of integrity and strength! Serendipitous memories and smoky sighs.

SURVIVORS

for June Jordan

I am no longer alone.

Resolve. Not to run on hatred, but love,

love for the sake of the people I love.

Live.

The presence of human life

the miracle of survival

amidst concrete playgrounds

skeletons of welfare and drugs

mutilated products of racism

people who experience ignorance, deprivation and horror

on a daily basis.

I am no longer alone.

Poetry by oppressed children and dreamers

continues to appear like love.

Live.

“I would like to go

where the golden apples grow.

Where the sunshine reaches out

touching children miles about

where the rainbow is clear in the sky

and passersby stop as they pass by.”

Deborah wrote that. She was 8. She was poor.

She also wanted to travel.

I am no longer alone.

Resolve. Not to run on hatred, but love,

love for the sake of the people I love.

Live.

Questions of freedom and identity appear like dreams.

How can I be who I am?

How can I know and realize my potential,

be other than I am?

The Diaspora, the Exodus

the drums of victims

of destruction, of power

of overwhelming circumstance

living testimonies of injustice, indifference

and vicious consequences.

What took you so long to awaken?

II.

I am no longer alone.

Resolve. Not to run on hatred, but love,

love for the sake of the people I love.

I am alive and sacrosanct,

potential exists, power.

Move into the community of moment

toward the self. But who am I?

Individualism can consume like sleep

separating people, community, spirits.

The self unconscious masquerades like a fool

falls, becomes a victim, full of fear.

I am no longer alone.

Live. Victims revolt, become agents, subjects

collectively choose new verbs, new actions,

new symbols, invent double-speak and nurturing strategies.

I am no longer alone.

Resolve. Not to run on hatred but love,

love for the sake of the people I love.

Despite class analysis, exploitation of human life

for material gain and profit

despite egregious metaphor of Justice

I live blindfolded.

I try to balance the fate of the living

try to protect the victims.

III.

I am no longer alone.

Love to live, to survive.

So what if I work, speak correctly

and dress très chic, like the powerful,

if I am no longer me, if I am silent to the needs

of the larger community

if I entertain delusions of ego

and no longer recognize who I am

where I am from, who my ancestors were.

If I no longer care,

victory is pyrrhic

and this is not survival.

I am no longer alone.

We are survivors!

We are strong to answer

on our own political terms

political as in group, as in community

as in language, as in power, as in life.

We assert and affirm new paradigms

praxis of the dispossessed

values, lifestyles, based on balance.

I am no longer alone.

Sisters and brothers conspire to understand

the processes of self-preservation, development

and forgiveness.

We demand and assume freedom

to stay alive to make life,

to incorporate new life into our lives.

We must arise collectively and assume responsibility

for the endangered ones.

I am no longer alone.

Seeking connections of love through self-love.

Then, I can love “the other.”

Revolutionary correspondences and distinctions

between what hurts me and who,

between what I am trained to accept and reject

or simply ignore,

between bribes and rewards.

Seeking to understand the tensions between us.

I am the critic, the lover, the nurturer

Archetypes all, myths all.

I am the poet, the creator, the chronicler.

I am here and I am there.

I feel the pain, I am pain.

I become yin and yang, you and me,

Both intrinsic to the struggle.

IV.

I am no longer alone.

There must be hundreds, thousands, millions

who feel as I do.

But how to connect our struggles and goals?

Hunger and famine affect 800 million,

a majority are women, a majority are Third World

or are we the First World?

How to connect with the dispossessed?

If I am dispossessed, so are you too.

The bonding has occurred in our humanness,

in our rituals, in the process of healing.

Solitary efforts soothe the conscience,

but do little to change the scale

of human misery.

How to connect with the victims?

We are all victims. How to scrape and axe away

at the minority status quo,

at the suffering syndromes of poverty, disease, despair?

We seek to be free,

to be who we are without fear,

without humiliation, without suffocation.

Free to assume fulfillment of our dreams,

To be responsive and responsible

for every aspect of our human beingness,

free to give to each of our lives a consecration

without equivocating, without sorrow.

We act on a moral and political stage.

I know I am no longer alone.

Resolve. Not to run on hatred, but love,

love for the people I love.

Live. Life. A celebration of community

where Joy transcends

like sisterhood, like brotherhood,

like struggle, like us.

We are no longer alone.

This is a perspective.

This is a faith.

REMEMBER ME? (photos where possible of poet performing)

Vaughn Boatner

Running barefoot through the jungle

Dogs barking behind me,

Timbers beneath my feet.

Chasing freedom reminds me,

There is nothing behind me to stop for, my heartbeat

A swollen mass, shoulders burning…

The four legged beast comes constantly, persistent, can’t resist me,

My spear stuck in a tree five miles away…

But today the noose is a gun around my black neck

As I hang suspended in the thickness of ghetto’s image.

A barrage of bullets sending definite messages,

Question is,

Is blackness a continuing beginning?

Or is my ghetto a superficial plantation,

Where my freedom to inhale is sinning?

I am executed, hot asphalt beneath me burning

White cops seduce me, permanently

Removed from the doppler

I am Oscar.

I am Treyvon Martin.

I am Kunta, I am Huey.

If you knew me you would know that I am the future, tho

A seed uprooted.

But I shall grow in my music

I shall grow in my children

I shall grow in your computer. You see,

The email from hell was sent, a shooter

In blue.

Who knew it would be you?

To serve and riuprotect, your knee on my neck,

Along with the noose, your bullets eject.

But I am the future.

I rise the next day in the eyes of a five year old black boy, disguised as a king buried beneath his black skin.

A tomb.

Risen is He

He knows the news that stings

His soft ears,

Questioning his fears

Diminishing his dreams of being.

He is torn in two. /Halfs

To laugh or cry, to die by the sword, to live by love?

To champion his spirit his sky’s above.

But as they gallop through the jungle I am their prey.

Their chariots equipped, high tech navigation.

They see where I'm at, before I get there.

They lay in wait for my black back is a target.

I am a runaway slave, a soaring bee, buzzing a pollinated tree, singing.

But my honey is made

I'm no longer needed.

They bringing my grave.

No grieving.

Back on the plantation mama's spirituals circulating, life, blood, passages through her scars. They are like highways on her back, brail, I read them my fingers feel hell.

Her smile is still leaving hope through our ordeal, though, our chains is constantly ringing… ching….ching….ching.

They cut Daddy down out of the hot sun.

His decomposed body landed in shade.

His neck, a testament of his disobedience.

His rest, lies in his believing his children would be free.

We are

In this next century a slave.

A statement I do regret.

Psychological shackles crackling beneath my tent.

I am bent

Over for my heroin addiction has sent

My spine rejecting/erected.

I accept my condition.

But I do not accept my fate. I know my God’s mission is not

This way.

I am over subdued consciousness saturated

With self will wandering blindly

Undisciplined hate.

Your change rings like metallic music cupped

In my beatened fingers.

Yet I remember Mama, Aretha, Mahalia,

Shirley Caesar Gospelling holy harmony absorbing my veins.

Ancestors standing up inside of me, drumming, guiding me, their graves.

Tho grotesque as my ways.

City buildings now lumming in the background.

I am the landscape sprawled across avenues,

Downtown, bus stops, my tent is in your way.

Walk around me.

Avoid me

You annoy me.

I am your slave.

REMEMBER ME?

In the great pilgrimage of Alexandria my libraries made your minds an upgrade.

STOLEN!

When I was free in paradise my throne golden

Sent glints of light reflecting through my staff, guiding stars abiding.

STOLEN!

when this useless flesh was entombed beneath pyramids, unmolded, airtight darkness.

Draped in the priceless jewels of Imhotep, surrounded by great saints, angels immortalized in the walls above me, statues directing traffic from the moon holding the great book of life all stolen!

Running barefoot through jungle,

Dogs barking behind me.

Timbers beneath my feet.

Chasing freedom reminds me,

There is nothing behind me to stop for,

My heartbeat

A swollen mass, shoulders burning.

The four legged beast comes constantly, persistent, can’t resist me.

My spear stuck in a tree five miles away!

Conquered

By Karla Brundage

4 hundreds of

years Christians

trekked thousands of miles

bearing bibles and long winded

sleeves

choking Malian warriors

with ties

strapping down Xulu breasts

un-cinching waist-beads to trade

in the Americas for land

replacing them with girdles

and full length skirts

Hawaiian tongues cut out

2 pronounce hymns

with high lace collars

hair unbraided

into tangled heaps called

Nappy

un-locked and pressed, ironed

clamped

wrapped

hidden

Christians

come in long lines with

hard-heeled boots

kicking in doors

shoring knee-high woolen socks

pants replace ceremony

to manhood

with submission

shorts to assimilate

In more modern warfare

The Christians undress their enemy

promoting bare heads

free flowing hair

breast liberation in bikinis

tattoos and appropriate native piercings

Even waist beads re-emerge without ritual

Crossings

By Karla Brundage

The MAAFA is a Kiswahili term for "terrible occurrence" or "great disaster." It refers to

the Black Holocaust when millions of Africans died during the journey of captivity from

the west coast of Africa to the shores of America, known as the Middle Passage.

How many times have we crossed this Atlantic

How many times our souls have flown

How many times have we crossed this Pacific?

What is it that we might not have known?

I look into the ocean for spirits of those

Who did not make the crossing

I look to the sea for the answers that

To this day me beguile

Sankofa protector of African people

Your drum combats evils practices of this world

Great bird, you flew with us, to take our spirits home

To make the first of all the great migrations

There will be no freedom without great sacrifice

And there is only one goal of freedom

The Castles where our Ancestors lay

Full of contradiction Above a church

Below a dungeon

the stage of the triangular trade was set

millions of Africans shipped to the New World

the Atlantic slave trade .

manufactured goods

we were traded or purchased

kidnapped transported across the Atlantic

became enslaved;

sold or traded for raw materials

the Voyage was a large financial undertaking,

organized by companies or groups of investors rather than individuals

The "Middle Passage" was considered a time of in-betweenness

motivated captive Africans to forge bonds of kinship which then

created forced transatlantic communities

An estimated 15% of the Africans died at sea

An estimated 2 million of the Africans died at sea,

An estimated 60 millions African would die as a result of the slave trade

An estimated 15% of the Africans died at sea,

How many times have we crossed this Atlantic

How many times our souls have flown

How many times have we crossed this Pacific?

What is it that we might not have known?

I look into the ocean for spirits of those

Who did not make the crossing

How many times have we crossed this ocean

Great Bird, take our spirits home

Why do Black People Protest? (Stock photo illustrating poems where possible)

By Karla Brundage

Black people have always fought for this country

Fought for

Fought this country

For fought for

This country

Fought

1. Alongside whites occupying spaces of shadow

2. My grandfather’s hat and gun, crossbow, spurs

3. Twinkle in his matted eye. Hair like a buffalo

4. Soldiers

5. In the bedroom too is silence

The stop the choking gall to aspire towards light.

Of course a synthetic illusion of freedom.

Please hold my blistered cotton hand, love.

Open the door, there’s a baked ham on the front table.

But to sacrifice my happiness to hatred

What for? Am I obligated too, to pay

Price paid so many times over?

Arms weary from carrying the sign post

Pinched nerves in the back of the spines

1. I AM A WOMAN

The Revolution will be Televised (With apologies to Gil Scott Heron) -- photo of Karla and Gil collage)

By Karla Brundage

The Revolution will be televised

Can’t you see it’s happening right now

Last night was phase 6

Shock and awe

Phase 1

Destroy the warriors

Define warriors how ever you want

Every society has always has warriors

Our warriors are being taken down 1 by 1

Phase 2

Cut out our tongues

Change the language

Redefine words to have new meanings

Liberal

Evil

Entitlement

Crime

News

Guilty

Apology

Impeach

President

Fake

Real

Fear for my life

Cloud

Footprint

Cloud

Phase three take our religion

Give us icons and devices to worship

Bow you head and text

Bow your head and text

Replace prayer with

Phase four

Take our land

Displace the people

Phase five

Destroy the family unit

Undo the matriarchy

Let the women come together

Against no

For

no against

no for

the safety of our children

born and unborn

our bodies

sacred and trampled

Deharmonize love

Phase 6

Shock and Awe

Replay violent deaths

Over and over

for analysis.

Was he really choking

Could he really breathe

Was she really carrying a phone

Was their skirt

Too short

Did they asked for it

Was his back really turned

Tell kids it’s okay to dance on the heads of their dead opponents

Introduce the extreme right

I’m right

Ask the extreme left

Who’s left?

The revolution will be televised

Turn off all the lights

Keep them on

Turn them off

Keep them on

Are we running out of water

Are we running out of time

Are we running

Make sure you have a gun

Lock your doors

Lock them tight

The revolution

Will be televised

Tonight

America I’m Leaving You

By Karla Brundage

You didn't think I would do did you

You with your endless stream of illusion Nexflixing me from

portal to portal

You my addiction to you was clear

how you pulled me by the hair

pushing your boot in my back

gunning my sacred hiding places

my children down

Mentally- you underestimated me

because I made you who you are

thought I would never leave

the bricks of the white house

the plantations

sugar honey sugar baby tar roads stoplights

cotton gin

thought I would take it all back

well- guess what

you can have it

But I am I’m leavin

for those so called backwards shithole places that

you dragged me out from

thought you rescued me from an abusive father

only to drown me in patriarchy

No way

Im outta here

to my own blackness my own

wilderness without electricity or running water

without toilets and multiple cars

I don't need a house that smells like pine sol

or cherries picked from slave labor

I am taking back my middle passage

getting on a ship and flying home

America, we are through

Life Light Remembered
by Tureeda Mikell's poem

Journey to Afrofuturism

Donald “C-Note” Hooker

On a journey

long, long, ago

Afrofuturism was long-sought

The maps of its existence

were misleading

like the maps to Wakanda

but She

a student at an HBC

found the truth

Afrofuturism

would not be found in Africa

but California

Like the Raiders to the Lost Ark

who sought God’s covenant

so too

Spanish Conquistadors

sought the Califia

The Queen

of the land

of Black women

She ruled with a Saber-tooth scepter

adorned gloves

from the Mammoth’s wool

She nursed

the Earth’s oldest and tallest trees

in the forests

of Redwoods

Invited the Blue whale

Earth’s largest mammal

to suckle her young

off Her coastal waters

In ancient times

Her Queendom fed the world

In modern times

It’s called

America’s

richest

farming region

But She

a student

from HBC

just like me

Prayed

to the Queen Mother

at a place

known as

Nob Hill

in San Francesco de Assisi

is enshrined

a mural

in a hotel

for one-percenters

The Califia spake

to our dear sister

in a way

only understood

by feminine energy

and so she wrote

as only a scholar can

the map

to Afrofuturism

It did not lead to Wakanda

in Africa

or the East

Where the Sun rises

but in the West

Where the Sun sets

in America

will Afrofuturism nurse itself

In the Queendom

of the Califia

California

Keep On Living

Eric Davis aka Sami' Manteen

When when you feel that life is a blank

It’s a sure time for you to give thanks

Search your subconscious it truly knows

It’s a true friend of all lonely Souls

Life is a struggle from the time it’s conceived

It’s all worth living if you only believe

The greatest gift available has been given to you

Be thankful and be true to life and see what it does for you

We’ve all got something coming some good and some bad

In our search for happiness we learn what it is to be sad

It’s the way of the world and Nature’s always fair

Never showing just one of anything but always revealing a pair

So take hold of your life it’s preciousness is divine

The things you can never get enough of are truly life and time

So be considerate of life and consciousness of time

For in their true Essence their neither yours nor mine

ONE DAY IS NEVER ENOUGH

Eric Davis aka Sami' Manteen

Bet You Didn’t Think I’d Come So Soon

With A Mother’s Day Card in The Month Of June

When Everybody Knows That Mother’s Day

Was Just Weeks Before in The Month of May

But for You One Day Just Won’t Suffice

Which Is Why I Decided to Do It Twice

Cause Mama Your Love Is Where It’s At

And You Really Deserve More Days Than That

Now The Cards and Roses Won’t Compensate

For The Love You’ve Shown Your Child Of Late

And Truly All Should Stop and Pause

And Give Their Mother’s A Round of Applause

Really We Should All Compose a Song

That Would Laud Your Efforts Our Whole Life Long

For in Duty Mothers Have Surpassed the Call

By Sharing the Burdens of Us All.

REGRETS

Eric Davis aka Sami' Manteen

When It’s Over and Done

And You Can’t Change What’s Passed

And The Memories Linger On

Wishing You Could Rearrange

What’s Causing Those Regrets

But You’re Forced to Live with What Is

Finding It Hard to Forgive Yourself

Never Finding the Reason Why, No Excusing You

Best to Abandon Trying to Justify

Why You Do What You Do

Ignorance Is No Excuse, Though It Be True

Fact Is, There Was a Lesson You Didn’t Learn

So It All Comes Back to You

Your Memory Only Serves to Punish

So I Try Whatever Helps Me to Forgot

Though There Is Nowhere Safe to Flee

I Keep On Placing My Bet

To Be Rid of That Part of Me

That I Will Always Regret

Not Finding That Key.

Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland

I drive a new friend around Oakland

She's from some place called Portland

Portland had slaves, I say-

Portland, Maine, you mean-

No. Oregon as well as Maine.

It's easy to get around my fair lady of a city

My pretty pretty gritty gritty city

Curled around its man-made lake.

My city will not become The White House

Where James Hoban's slaves,

Ben, Peter and David, his carpenters,

Someone else's bricklayers built an edifice.

This temperate city, 62 degrees year round,

Will not become another San Francisco

Who, in her glory, banished the people who built her.

Oregon used exclusion laws

In the 1840s and 1850s

To keep free negroes out and dared

The ones there to leave at once or else.

San Francisco used the laws of avarice

And greed to build its white houses while

Middle class blacks and the working poor

Who never knew they were equally unequal

Left through the same back door.

I drive my friend to Oakland's shopping hubs -

From Jack London Square to Chinatown

From Old Oakland to Uptown

Hey look, a freebie bus from dawn to dusk!

From Laurel to Fruitvale to Montclair Village

Piedmont to Grand and on to Temescal

When we drive through Rockridge District, she's

astonished. "This isn't Oakland. It's Berkeley."

No, it pretends it's Berkeley

And keeps its blacks behind the counters.

I show her the back doors to the freeways

The secret to getting anywhere here

in fifteen minutes tops.

"We built this city on rock and roll"

Nice try, Jefferson Starship

But you left out The Fillmore

Bobby Blue Bland, Bop City

Sugar Pie De Santos doing the splits.

Oh, baby, those splits built these cities

So you're not coming to Oakland

And tearing down our spirit

Manhattan my ass

Brooklyn my ass

Oakland is not the new San Francisco

No matter how many of us you displace.

My friend, you said at brunch

You jetted here to work at Genentech.

Jazz, the blues and my parents came

The same way riding the Santa Fe.

If we needed her bus fare for lunch

My mother walked from East Oakland

To the Naval Supply at dawn

Seven miles from E.14th to Seventh St.

I said she gave us her car fare for lunch.

My devout Christian mother who didn't

Allow alcohol or swearing in her house

Walked past Esther's Orbit Room

And Slim Jenkins Supper Club

Cared not a whit for John Lee Hooker

But knew the hookers on the street

Were blessed angels at her feet.

To whom does Oakland belong?

The deer in the foothills?

The fauna in the ponds?

Don Peralta's descendants?

My mom and pop whose plots

Sit silent in the wind?

The Hokan and Penutian hunting turtles and deer?

Do the dead Chumash own Santa Barbara

Or do Oprah and Jeff Bridges?

I want to coexist

I love to coexist

I live for my city’s turquoise sunsets

Its rainbow of tongues

Its unspoiled immigrants

Their dreams as mangled as our schools

These problems we keep working

our darnedest to resolve...

One more tip, my darling dear:

Don't take the wrong freeway exit

Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland.

Although the 30th Anniversary of the Annual African American Celebration through Poetry was February 2020, we continued virtually through the Covid facility shutdown. The 31st Annual Poetry Celebration honored two poets who passed the prior year, Adam David Miller and QR Hand. It was an all-star lineup. The following year we featured poets from the African Diaspora. Our last year we featured Avoctja, poet teacher, musician and DJ and Ayodele N’Zinga, Ph.D., Poet Laureate for the City of Oakland. We concluded 2024. There was no reading in 2025. I needed to focus on getting this anthology completed.

in memory of QR

devorah major

for QR Hand

1. Q’s painting Lush Life at Bajones

is hung on my wall

it was a gift added to the gift

of an afternoon spent taking notes

on a piece of his family’s story

that may have been myth

and certainly, was mystery

San Francisco sojourners

come from and returned to

the New York thoroughfares

where he was born

something about fresh bread

and a red-haired parchment colored

girl in her then named colored

daddy’s Mary Street bakery

her heart was taken

by a Ceylon black-tea tinted sailor

armed with the resiliency of love

in 19th century Frisco

I look at Q’s painting and see

mission street shadows

brushed in abstract angles

café and plate glass windows

skyline and sloping people

and hear strayhorn’s song

pressed into the silver architecture

where music is being

strummed by a lanky guitarist

perched on a corner bench

2. talking w/Q was a jazz poem

improvised layered riffs

with squawks and squalls

and a humming bass holding all it down

with a high-hat cymbal

punctuating the silences

you had to pulse poetry

to conversate deeply with him

speaking in rhythms and laughter

long back stretches and leaning in hard lines

saw QR on Mission street corners and in poetry cafes

with and without word-wind chorusing on different stages

rocking mikes and giving homage to the word

to la gente of the struggle

don’t know where or how we met except

it was decades ago and it

must have been carpeted by poetry

petals falling around our feet

in the word gardens

we planted and nourished

his friends mine across bridges and miles

didn’t cross his doorway till he moved to Vallejo

and I was to read at Listen and Be Heard

he telling me to come by his and Pam’s place

and have some brandy before the gig

Q loved all peoples while shaking fists

at the demons who defiled

this that could be eden eternally

I love Q not because he was saintly

but because he was truly humane human

a hued man who saw the world

in all its passion and fury

and knew it was worth fighting for

making time

devorah major

before belief there was

only a now

that was eternal

then when our gods

recreated our universe

there became a time before

now gone

and a time after

now here

and a time yet to be

it was then that time

took root as noose and win

we cannot breathe

devorah major

the fires of last night are miles away

an arsenal of fury, a media of bitten sound

with reality gasps and theoretical pundits

blankets the nation

I weep as I view

streets swallowed by youth

smoke rising from

small shop owners’ ashen dreams

I understand the headiness of the

cloaked night’s eruptions

the terror and excitement

when the earth begins to tremble

underneath one’s feet

the upraised arms

of a defiant, energetic, determined

young men and women

backlit by the blazing night

but in the morning

what is the plan

the strategy

the next move

we cannot breathe

freely

it’s been that way

for over four hundred years

we can see the mountain range

but how do we scale its cliffs

how do we perch

chisels and pickaxes in hand

and level it

mask days

devorah major

we have always

carved wood

molded bronze

woven straw

laced feathers

stitched fabric

to craft our masks

which welded purpose

with resolve

we have

worn masks

to claim power

guide initiation

ensure success in the hunt

invoke protection

we have always

known masks

as a way to defend

and strengthen

our sacred selves

then too we have

worn masks

unseen by most

that veiled our eyes

and shielded our hearts

to conceal our true disposition

we have never feared the mask

rejected the mask

denied the mask

we embrace its energy

and its promise

A LITTLE LIFE STORY

By Bisola Marignay

January 2010

“We all have a twin.” That’s an expression we hear from time to time, but few of us believe. We realize that there may be others whom we resemble, but our internal experience supports our belief in our uniqueness. Then too, feedback received in response to expressions of our internal character helps to firmly set the idea that each of us is one of a kind unless one is born a twin.

Stories I heard my grandmother tell deeply rooted my belief in my personal uniqueness early. According to her, I have been a rebel since, at least, age four. That is when I began to question the religious views that she, my entire family, and tribe held, and tried to teach me. I learned early that being an outsider felt better than going along with ideas I could not accept. Early comfort with my different outlook led to equal ease and belief about the distinctiveness of my physical appearance.

I lived for fifty years with a core sense of singularity and surety of the impossibility of another person being physically exactly like me. Then the words, “This is a nice picture of you” shoved me into a fog. My friend spoke as she passed me a small journal with a picture of a woman on the back cover. I had to search my memory to see if I had ever been in the environment from where my twin looked out in the photo.

I realized that it could not be my picture only because I knew that I had never been in that space. My friend and I looked at the image again and again. She even had large hands like or me like her. Her hands were prominent in the photo because it was taken as she was working in her studio. She is an artist too! A sculptor!

It was a totally spooky way of realizing that our human inventory and our worship of it sits on a shallow platform of vanity. It pushed me further along into broader conscious consideration of human beings’ equality with other creatures. Maybe all humans have a doppelganger. Maybe that factor is as common among humans as it is as among other creatures, puppies, giraffes, elephants, and other creatures, but the distribution differs. Overall, it was a good experience of growth for which I am grateful.

Dance Africa

Poem

By Bisola Marignay (2013)

On a soul train fueled by organic joy

We dance across oceans, plains and hills

Hollering, chanting, clapping, and stomping

Life’s beat.

There’s a move for everybody to get a

grove.

Babies bounce on labs and twirl in arms ‘til

They stand and shake alone.

At three or four, they’re moving tough!

Each generation to its own form

Keeping rhythm through life’s many songs.

Cakewalkers brought forth Boogie-woogies,

Lindy Hoppers and Black Bottom gliders

who raised Charleston Kickers to spring off

robust Jitter Buggers.

They brought forth Boppers, Twisters, and

Hustlers, Riding the Pony, Doing the Dog,

Bumping, and Mashing Potatoes.

We danced, danced!

Danced all that way into Disco and the

Electric Slide.

Dance Africa, Dance!

When those next in line started to Break,

Then went on to Popping and Locking,

It was time for us to Step!

Dance Africa, Dance!

Across highlands, plains, grasslands, and

desserts. In rituals and for pure joy with

grace, energy, and logic

A ya ya ya ya ya yaya

Bom Bom Bom Bom Bom

Traditional to High Life to Shoki and Galala

at home!

Africa Dances!

Everywhere Africans dance

African Dance remains -

Merengue, Samba, Rumba, Afoxe, and

Maculele in Brazil, Tango posited in

Argentina; Mumbo and Cha Cha In Cuba,

Punta in Belize with Salsa, and Socar all

around the Caribbean!

Dance Africa!

Supporting physical, spiritual, and

emotional life,

Dance, our Juju, our Juju, our Juju

moving sorrow into joy!

Precious Spirit’s collective energy source,

A ya ya ya ya ya yaya

Bom Bom Bom Bom Bom

Africa Dances!

AFRICA DANCES!

Twentieth Anniversary Reflection

Wanda Sabir

The 20th Annual African American Celebration through Poetry started a little late and went over, but that seemed to be okay as folks who hadn’t seen each other in years were about to smile and laugh and reconnect. When I walked into the room at 12:50 it was almost full with people who’d came over from the mural dedication and the opening of a community journalism site for West Oakland sponsored in part by the Maynard Institute and the Oakland Tribune. It was nice seeing Martin Reynolds, my former editor now managing editor for many years there.

Charles Aikens, veteran journalist was in the house joking with Lee Williams. poet, artist, veteran. Former College of Alameda students, and colleagues from Contra Costa College were also in the house in the back cutting up and KTOP was there as well, to record that historic event for Oakland cable television. Steve McCutchen, as promised, brought a tape from 1995 featuring Joy Holland, one of our deceased alumni and he read poetry from Joy and another poet, Dennis Omowale Cutten.

I think we will continue the toast next year as well to those who graced the stage in the past.

My granddaughter and her uncle, Maurice recited a poem Brianna wrote about her dog Kane, that everyone loved and there were several standing ovations as poets shared poetry that deeply moved those present to tears, like Camille Bernstein and Ciara Lovelace.

Marvin X and Paradise came through, Paradise with his classic, I Love Everything About You but You, and Marvin’s black history lesson which he printed on broadside and gave to people was wonderful!

I hadn’t known Paradise was coming and Marvin said he wasn’t. Lige Dailey was there and with him another former student of mine, Summer who’d shared in 2003 a poem written in the voice of an elder, Advice to the Youth.

Halifu Oumare was in the house and ancestors called on her to witness their presence:

The invocation is: "Ebashe Egun," which means “Ancestors, May it be so!” The invoker should say that to greet his/her ancestors, and then call the names of the ancestors he/she wants to remember and ask for blessings in life.

WE, THE DETERMINED

Amos White

We hold no fears

of elections

nor hanging

ballots

nor chads

nor promises of

dreams deferred

We hold no fear

of elections

nor bullies

nor bullets

nor of those who would

hinder

We do not fear

suffrage

We cast our mark

on offices,

on present

history

We, the enfranchised,

elect

as our empowerment

as our birth

right

We the fearless

vote

We know the cost

of skin

in the game

Them who don't show up

eat

triple K rations

from a porcelain

slate

We fear not

elect

shuns hunger for a place

at the table

We fear not

to elect

for centuries

our choice

We hold no fear

We exercise. We organize.

We activate. We mobilize.

We educate.

When we turn out

we win.

We do not fear

We remember

Alabama

We remember

Hope

We remember

Selma

We remember

we are memory

We remember we

the glorious

can mark victory

with an X

on a plain

white sheet

A Wish for You from a Tree

Amos White, Haiku Poet

As we are to emerge through

this crisis

tall and resolute,

reaching for sun

like the tree

thru the mist of climate

we too must learn to emulate

to evolve

to clone old ways upon new branches

and to support mother nature's

persistence

to bring all back

into one

harmonial

balance

What If

by Marvin X

What if there was no God but God

No Allah Jesus Jehovah Buddha Marx Lenin Jah Damballah

What if there was no God but God

No religion but God

No Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu

No God but God

No Baptist Sunni Shiite Zionist Hebrew Communist Sikh Catholic God in Christ

Methodist Sufi

Atheist

No God but God

No woman man child grandmother grandfather uncle aunt

No God but God

No holiday except everyday holy day

No Sabbath but everyday no Juma’a but everyday

No prayin but all day

All day we say nothing but No God but God

No more Bible Qur’an Torah

No God but God

No talk conversation no sermon no speech no words but silence and

NO God but God

No moaning no laughing

No God but God

No talk no tears no wars

No God but God

No killing no lying

No God but God

No Al Humdulilah

No Hallelujah

No Hail Krishna

No Jah Rastafari

No God but God

The One

The Unity

Eternal

Everlasting

Loving

Peaceful

Maker

Owner

No God but God

What if what if what if

Maybe maybe maybe

Believe it believe it

Because it is

One God One Truth One Reality One Unity

No sects schisms divisions religions boxes tribes nations

One humanity One God

What if there is no God but God

What if what if what if

No temple no church no masjed

No God but God

No preacher no imam no rabbi no priest no minister no shaman no poet

No God but God

No prophet no messenger no messiah

No God but God

What if gay marry gay

Lesbian marry lesbian

Man marry woman

Man marry women

Woman marry men

Ho’s be with tricks

Tricks be with ho’s

What if what if what if

There is No God but God

No one beats woman

No one beats man

No one beats child

No one kills no one

No God but God

What if there is no war

What if there is peace on the planet

No God but God

What if guns are no more

No God but God

All is God

God is All

God is the people

God is the cow

God is the horse

God is the tree

God is the river

God is the fish

God is the child

God is the youth

God is the old people

God is the poor

God is the rich

God is the hungry

God is the sick

God is the dope fiend

God is the alcoholic

God is the sinner

No God but God

What if what if what if

There is no God but God

What if God is the captive you won’t liberate

The child you won’t love

The mama you hate

The daddy you hate

What if there is No God but God

What if God is the fear

You won’t release

God is the pain you won’t release

God is the love you won’t release

God is the tears you won’t cry

God is the lies you tell

God is the mountain you won’t climb

God is the success you won’t try

God is the beauty you don’t see

God is time

Running out the hourglass

God is the body you refuse to heal

God is the mind you refuse to feed

What if what if what if

What if God is ready when you ain’t ready

What if God is ready when you get ready

What if what if what if

What if there is no God but God

What if God is the forgiveness you won’t give

What if God is the denial you drown in like a hog in slop

What if what if what if

What if God is the peace in your house

The love in your life

The joy on your face

The happiness in your heart

The thankfulness of your smile

What if there is NO God but God

What if my life and my death are all for God

Not for woman, not for man

Not over a woman, not over a man

Life and death are all for God

What if what if what if

What if I grieve for nothing

Because God is everything

Whatever God wants I want

Whatever God don’t want I don’t want

Whatever God has I have

Whatever God don’t have I don’t want

What if what if what if

There is No God but God.

I Believe in She or “She Is”

For TaSin (inspired by Marvin X who was inspired by his love for Amiri Baraka)

By Wanda Sabir

I believe in women. The womb that bears all without question and certainly no thanks.

I believe in she, she who is mightier than the flesh he binds to himself – his existence shadowy at best . . . a trick of light vanished when electricity is cut off

Utility has its benefits. I believe in paying my bills for that reason.

I believe in burning lights until filaments cry no more

– I believe in word/wood stoves.

Haints hidden in corners flee

I believe in ghosts.

I believe in wombness (I believe in wombful)

I believe in wombful-nest

Sacred houses in treetops

I believe the people could fly

Why else set young in wombfulness on branches along the elderberry, between the figs and avocados

Juniper leaves an aromatic umbrella

I believe in chance and in the unknown

I believe in stepping off a cliff just to test the ground – (is it really there?)

I have no broken bones

I believe in children

I believe in slumber and dreaming and rest for the weary

I believe in medicine, the kind that heals

I believe in people who believe in people

I believe in laying the eggs in a wombness

24 hour cycles of life and birth and death

Stepping off the edges of doubt and falling into an awkwardnest of what letting go feels like before death before life before doubt – (before there is no doubt left)

I believe in paying my bills when I can

I believe in making bills – I believe in needs being filled with cans purchased at hardware stores

Village Women walk miles to fill and then pile on their heads and carry in their arms to inherited destinations – desert(ed) places where life doesn’t always grow

Fallow terrain devasted by phallus-talking hyenas in suits

I believe in paper mâché filling stations where art as fuel as recycled wealth as penury as outlaw culture feeds a system that once destroyed life

I believe in woman

Her sacred treehouse precariously near the end of branches heavy . . . impending birth rites pending as she moves items in her pocketbook searching for brass tokens and finds one— parity rooted in whom one knows

Womb bears toll

Rides shotgun stretches of time ‘cross roads traveled often or not at all . . . yet its implication and intention for a prescribed number of years keeps her buoyed when vertigo makes sitting standing or walking a chore

Womb shackled ‘round her neck

Childbirth a ride that stretches ‘cross a road oft-traveled yet always new . . . it is the renewal that keeps her buoyed

It is the mystery that makes hunger after sickness morning after morning its own kind of reward

It is the 4-D pictures of little one snug in his car seat—the idea, car seat a prototype for layered uterus

Cotton not blood vessels and fat and tissues – sleep foam – those nine months we cannot get back to no matter how many personal days and extended vacations left before separation

Menopause – womb magic exploding

Estrogen gone.

I believe in women.

She

She is all

She orchestra

She music . . . lyrical sheets folded and pressed, scented with lavender, vanilla, jasmine, honeysuckle – A lyric whose words measure tap tap-tap, heart songs on felled trees seated ‘long city blocks where they once stood so tall

She

She mother

She earth, she all, she nothing at all

She origin story

She Bubbling laughter – she solar plexus laugh; deep belly breaths from core molten lava laughs

Black liquid amber . . . she arrows flying from bent branches scattered along the sidewalk . . .

She lands . . . dancing figure 8s

We look up and can’t escape what is inevitable

Arms open we embrace the splitting asunder

She piercing sounds

She change we have been avoiding

She ointment to ease travel south towards Ma’at, towards Yaa Asantewa, towards exile

Split we do not think broken – we do not think. We holy . . .

Forced isolation

With separation comes clarity

She world within world

She womb

She assembly

She all there is

She all we need

She necessary

I believe in she

She needles

She story

She wisdom

She stitching, always sewing and stitching and darning and patching and joining and ripping apart seams and realigning we

I have learned to not get too comfortable with a particular identity, just enjoy the garment while I am in it ‘cause nothing is certain except she womb and she fertility

Since 2014, Zakiyyah and her husband, Baba Bryant Bolling perform together. Bryant’s lovely vocal arrangements and musical accompaniment add breath and essential meaning to the spoken words of his wife and TuBeNu Cultural Gatherers, partner.

THE DRUM BEAT

by Zakiyyah G.E. Capehart

Listen for the drumbeat.

Can you hear the drum?

I hear the drumbeat.

Drumming, drumming, drumming,

Drumming, drumming, drumming.

The elders say the drumbeat mimic our heartbeat.

For it is the lifeline of our existence.

Without our heartbeat.

We cannot continue to live.

Without the drumbeat.

We forfeit to give to each other.

The legacy of our ancestors.

They taught us to always stay close to,

the drumbeat,

the drumbeat.

It is important that we continue to love, honor, respect, and cherish, our rich heritage.

Because Africa is the cradle of all civilization.

We come from a noble people who were

Kings, and Queens, mathematicians, navigators, scientists, engineers, agriculturers, architects, artists, herbal healers, astrologers, astronomers.

All swaying to the rhythmic pulse of our cultural identity.

The entire continent of Africa communicates through,

the drumbeat,

the drumbeat.

Whether from north, south, east, or west of the motherland.

The drumbeat in Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, West Africa speaks of the Ashanti, Mandingo, and Yoruba nations.

Who are known for their courage as warriors.

While hunting for food or protecting the village.

They are also historically known for their cowrie shells, kente cloth, mud cloth, the Djembe, and Dunun drums.

The Kikuyu, Maasai, and Watusi beats the drum in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, East Africa.

And are known for their Royal Wood carvings.

Which represents the family tree of life.

Much of the gold and diamonds,

we love to wear.

Come from the rich earth of South Africa.

Where the Zulu, Bushmen, and Hottentot nations beat the drum.

And own the land of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Botswana.

Spirituality has always been the thread that has woven African people together.

The Kemetic nation created during ancient times.

A system of 42 Kemetic commandments, known as the Principles of Maat.

North African countries like Mali, Algeria, and Egypt.

Beat the drum, and built the Pyramids.

They also contributed renowned historical figures like King Tutankhamun, Cleopatra, Nefertiti, and Imhotep.

From the Kemetic, and Bantu nations.

Our rich heritage extends globally.

You can hear the drumbeat resounding from Mother Africa.

To the Caribbean, South America, North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe.

So listen for the drumbeat.

Listen for the drumbeat.

Can you hear the drum?

I hear the drumbeat.

Drumming, drumming, drumming,

drummimg, drummimg,drumming,

drummimg, drummimg, drummimg,

drumming, drummimg, drummimg.

I REMEMBER GRANDMA

(for my grandmother, Nancy Hyman Smallwood Bond)

by Zakiyyah G.E. Capehart

Grandma I always think of you

when the train goes...

Choo choooooooooooooooooooo

Walking on the road

that led to your house

There was a pasture

where horses grazed

On that day

that I ran away

I was only a child

And mother

had fixed my hair

in such pretty curls

All dressed up

I was grandma's little girl

Suddenly the horses

began to gallop

in their pasture

And from the

swift movements

of the stallion

I knew at any moment

the mares would turn

in my direction

And I would learn

the true meaning

of godspeed

from the hoofs of horses

in a stampede

I ran...

like the wind

mother later explained

but straight to grandma's arms

Was my only claim

She held me close

soothing me

with hugs and kisses

Still to this day

that moment

I continue to revisit

When late at night

the train

blows its whistle

I think of you grandma

and your house

by the railroad tracks

And I remember that time

way way back

When hugs and kisses

were a matter of fact

At times now

I try to return

But there's

no going back

despite my yearning

So I keep you right here

right here in my heart

'Cause grandma

I always think of you

When the train goes...

Choo choooooooooooooooooooo

PA PA

(for my grandfather, William Bollie Capehart)

by Zakiyyah G.E. Capehart

You were tall and bald when we met.

I remember you cursing and swearing.

I was merely a babe in arms, but I knew you was my pa pa.

Lean and mean, hopping quick and steady.

Brilliant with your thoughts and constant in your habits.

Perpetuating wisdom in my eyes and others.

Possessing knowledge and understanding that encircled our heads.

Educated by life experiences and mother wit.

You were a self taught man.

Oh how I miss you Pa Pa.

I cry, when I think of how much I really do miss you.

I recall how my sisters and I used to gather around you for storytelling time and how intensely I listened.

While sitting on the front porch swing in the summertime.

Or nestled during the winter around the radiant fireplace.

When all was serene and innocent.

Your stories were always real to me.

Like the daily problems we encountered in the rural south and your resourcefulness in resolving those issues.

Pa Pa I miss your wisdom.

I miss your intellect.

I miss your humor.

And oh, oh how I miss your storytelling times.

But mostly

Most of all...

I miss you.

FEBRUARY 8, 2016 by James Cagney

The Spook by The Door (Who Wouldn’t Sit Still)

When James came to the Poetry Celebration he usually brought a story. His tales were so tall we had to stand on ladders to see the end. At the 30th Annual Celebration of African American Poetry and their Poetry, we hadn't seen James in many years. It was a reunion!

The praise dancers of the Apostolic Faith Church perform during the Family and Friends Day morning service.

If you use a Yoruba chant to open a public event, welcoming the ancestors to join and be welcome in the proceedings, how do you close the ceremony and tell the ancestors, spirits– thanks for coming! shows over now, yawl can go back to the far reaches of heaven or wherever… I ask because a woman got up to do the opening welcome. Since she announced herself as a teacher– she did it ‘properly’, in Yoruba. Emptied a plastic drinking glass over a tiny but erect houseplant then proudly returned to her seat, smiling. Then sometime later, perhaps an hour or so, to my left from where I sat in the back, what appeared to be a chestful of blue cigarette smoke moved up the aisle and quietly dissipated into the air. Thin lines of embroidered smoke moved stealthily like the tail end of a dress swinging then appearing to step into nothingness. The poetry reading went on. Certainly no one was smoking or even vaping in here. A former librarian sat across from me, attentive (and resembled Michelle Obama if Michelle was fair skinned and had long dookie braids) No one except me acted as if they saw anything and I’m not sure I really saw it. But, of course I did. I’m getting way ahead of myself.

Saturday was the 26th Annual African American Celebration Through Poetry held at the West Oakland Branch Library. In spite of its 26 year run, I’d all but forgotten about it until having dinner with a friend of mine who forwarded me the flyer and call for poets. I read at this event at least twice before. The last time, an uncountable number of years ago, I read a story– a retelling of the John Henry folktale, only done as if Lord Buckley would do it, through his semantics of the hip. I read it one time only and shelved it for being ‘weird’. I have nowhere near the stage confidence of Lord Buckley, even if he’s basically a car thief of African American slanguage.

This time though, I had some poems to represent under the Black Lives Matter campaign and wanted to be in that room and share them.

It was Super Bowl weekend. The sky was polished bright blue. I got to the library an hour early and crossed the street to hang out for a while at de Fremery Park. The park has a long and involved history with Oakland and the Black Panthers, but a history for me also. I thought of the times I came here as a kid; the hours spent on slides and swings, the sand I’ve eaten. The picnics here with family. My grandfather lived a few blocks sprint from here and another block further from him was where my first best friend, Anthony, once lived. Yet another two blocks from him was the beauty school where my mom once taught. All memories moving at lightspeed away from me, it seems. I crossed the park and settled amongst a half dozen pic-nic tables to write. Across from me a group of men, all white I quietly noted, played basketball. A man walked his children over to the playground. From where I sat, I couldn’t see the concrete skater’s bowl just below the park’s horizon. I opened my backpack, took out some paper and notebooks and worked for a half hour or so.

I slowly strolled back to the library, passing the recreation center which after all these years I’ve never been inside of. Its a huge Victorian mansion I’ve never had courage enough to enter. Today I had no time. I walked past and saw a few girls in black and purple dresses getting ready for something; all preening and posing in front of hand mirrors. I wanted to be nosy, but being alone I was obviously a dismissible pervert, so I kept my head down and crossed the street.

50 or 60 or so chairs had been set up in the multi-purpose room; its tiny kitchen open; a bowl of mixed fruit and a carafe of coffee was already set out. Reynaldo, a painter was attempting to hang some of his paintings but the temporary hooks wouldn’t adhere to their surface, and twice his paintings slid off the wall and thwacked the ground loudly. Another artist took over the back table with collaged post-cards and flyers, then littered the stage with graffiti’d umbrellas painted with key words, affirmations and historical figures. For a while I talked with a man I knew from years ago. We caught up briefly while his wife sat across from us doing some last minute work on her laptop. He told me since we’d last talked he’d gone to Brazil but while there picked up some nasty infection of some kind. What got him to go to Brazil? I asked. While he answered, his wife smirked to herself and shook her head, as dismissively as a judgmental mother. She puffed herself up slightly like a bird and announced over us both the name of the conference she attended and the talk she had to give. But she mostly kept her eyes on the screen and shook her head. Her eavesdropping suddenly taking what little energy there was out of our chat.

Reynaldo came over to where me and the man was standing. He had found a display solution for his paintings since he couldn’t hang them. For all intents and purposes, he looked like me, if I came from Jamaica. Heavy set in a hand painted t-shirt, a wiry beard tracing his jaw and a red black and green skull cap on his head.

What college did Malcolm X go to? He said. He didn’t. But people at every university in this country study Malcolm X.

I asked him all of nothing, but he stood next to me and started talking. What’s weird: he kinda directly answered a question I posed to the universe a month or so back.

You don’t go to school to study art, Reynaldo said with a vague distain. You learn how to make art by making art. You learn by doing it, You learn by making mistakes. People ask me where I went to school. Schools come to me! You don’t go to school to study to be an artist. You make art! No one tells me how to make these paintings….

I looked at the paintings he displayed: the one on the end will make you think of Picasso. This one reminiscent of Matisse. All raw and powerful and well crafted. I listened and remembered: I never studied poetry in high school. I discovered poets by going to the library and choosing books at random, some based on the title, others on a name I kinda remembered.

I learned to write poetry as on the job training, I finally told him.

All art is on the job training, he said. Then ended our conversation and went back to his art table.

And maybe that was the ENTIRE reason I wanted to come to this event.

Otherwise, it started a leisurely half hour late. The host arriving 10 minutes before the 1pm start time. It was scheduled to end at 4 and I left a quarter before the hour and they still had several readers and an open mic to get to.

And the show itself; a community poetry reading which felt more like church fellowship. A lot of seniors – myself included, I guess– in the audience and performing. The woman dressed most elegant who gave a lot of shade to her husband earlier, did the opening ceremony in Yoruba, which was nice. She was dressed in a dark pink business casual suit, not some flowery West African wrap. I listened to her vowel heavy words and thought how both Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou fueled both poems I planned to read. I remembered my grandfather and the cadence he’d use for his sermons, a cadence I certainly appropriated in my delivery.

The woman finished and returned to her seat, swollen with pride. The, ahem, smoke I saw moving amongst the crowd, I wondered if it remained here or if it came attached to someone in the room? Nonetheless, it was like a sheer skirt whose piping you could barely see before it vanished.

The first reader was a young high school girl who read a poem on her phone, then placed the phone on the speaker next to the mic while a gospel song played, she then Praise Danced. A curious development to emerge in Christian churches since I’ve been away… She pantomimed the lyrics, her long arms and legs swooping as if she were attempting tai chi and got the holy ghost. The readers varied from a man pacing while doing a mini-lecture before reciting Claude McKay’s If We Must Die then two original and brief poems. A buttery smooth senior who recited perfectly measured couplets in the old-school Toast style. A legendary bay poet who performed in a super-powered wheel chair and apologized for needing to leave early and making people buy her book. She set up shop in the back of the room before leaving. Activist Leroy Moore demanded we include honoring disabled African Americans when we honor folks during Black History Month. (Mental note: Get his book, Avoid Amazon.)

I awaited a couple more poets of legend and note to perform, both of whom I knew, before I snuck out. I was happy to’ve been there and read. I felt like I gave a micro-sermon. People were attentive and present and loving. It felt like church fellowship, too. If there is a proper closing ceremony in the Yoruba tradition, I missed it. But I’m glad the spirit (Claude, was that you??) moved among us and was even happier it didn’t follow me out of the library.

But seriously– how to show spirits the final exit and who tells them Thank You and Good Night?

From: https://thedirtyrat.blog/2016/02/08/the-spook-by-the-door-who-wouldnt-sit-still/

My Name is James Cagney I Am a Black Poet And I Refuse to Remain Silent While This Nation Continues To Murder Black People. I Have A Right To Be Angry

You have the right to be right. You have the right To Claim, To Rename, To Redefine. You have the right To Judge / To Frisk / To Choke. You have the right to remain standing; to remain whole, without being questioned. You have the right to ignore others rights. To speak for all victims and tell a room of widowed mothers to shut up.

You have the right to Not See Color and firebomb diversity out of your field of vision. You have the right to feel easily threatened. To Invade, To Displace, To Demoralize. You have the right to the right side of history and enjoy the good weather of the touring oppressor

You have the right to trivialize the memorials of our dead while your missing daughters are canonized their schools closed and garland with roses

You have the right to be inconvenienced by protests, by funerals, by the lives you didn’t approve; You have the right to ride to hounds; To turn lynchings into a fraternal hazing workout…To turn lynchings into pop-up shops and award souvenirs.

You have the right to not see the problem; To browse safari thru communities. To love wild animals while dismissing grown men as savages / as monkeys. You have the right to prefer a comfortable lie over the truth...

You have the right to claim genocide as culture; To fellate weapons & sponsor the indignity of war; to see war as a product, to copyright the blood

You have the right to justify torture and take selfies with the dead.

You have the right to be both the victim and the knife in the dark; To be the dark itself & the light glinting off the blade; to be ubiquitous and unseen:

You have the right to ethnically cleanse until culturally clean and repeat. You have a right to misunderstand history Just Enough then edit the facts that make you uncomfortable;

You have the right To Condescend, To Humiliate, To Desecrate; To redefine words used against you and dismiss our testimony; To control our prescriptions while telling us we’re crazy

You have the right to riot in the name of football; torch buses and Dumpsters not in your backyard-- whether you win or lose; anarchy as good fun! Boys being boys! and all…

You have the right not to be questioned; to never be held accountable. To in fact do the accounting! To claim what hasn’t been offered.

You have the right To Shoot & Not to Be Shot. You have the right to demand God act on your order with the Power of Now. You have the right to complain when our prayers are too loud.

If you ask me to swear on a Bible, I have the right to ask if you’ve read it. Anything in your history can but will never be used against you. Knowing and understanding that if you cannot remember which of your grandparents were members of the Klan, then your history will be expunged.

You have the right to hope your enemies don’t read history. You have the right to have no enemies. You have the right to close your door on their grievances.

You have the right not to be sorry. You have the right to be armed and assumed innocent. You have the right to protect your best interests. You have the right of way. You have the right to be right

This poem was recited at the 26th Annual African American Celebration of African Americans and Their Poetry, Feb. 6, 2016. The theme: Black Lives Matter. Reprinted with permission.

Joy Holland poetry and artwork (If you don’t like America, Leave)

Steve McCutchen – poetry missing

Tongo Eisen Martin (selection ?)

QR Hand Jr. poem

Robert’s Reflection (need to ask again for it)

Kathryn Takara (poem?)

Nia McAllister (poem?)

Steve? (poem?)

Joy Holland (need to type. I have permission)

Lee Williams (permission?)

Dennis Omowale Cutten (permission?) Find a photo.

Shahid’s wife . . . (permission?)

Arnold White (permission?) Reprint a photo he gave me and a broadside he gave me.

Adisa (ask?)

Tyrice narrative and poem (ask ?)

Interchange

Sunday, March 30, 2025

Film Review

Thursday, March 20, 2025

30 Years of African American Poetry @the West Oakland Library

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