postcard from helmand...

Helmand province, Afghanistan: A camel train

fotocredit: Kevin Frayer

Chimurenga Dreamin'

pic jacked from the fab chimurenga magazine http://www.chimurenga.co.za/

pic by Katlego Mogadima

its the gap in my teeth, the width of my smile

the rickets in my knees,

the wiriness of my frame

its the day i grow from a girl to woman and

my rickets shaped by time to take the curve of my hips,

its the growth of wisdom in the rear of my mouth;

its the gap in my front, outgrown by incisors,

tearing away at life,

while

sandwiched between the chaos and the calm;

chimurenga dreamin',

dreamin' chimurenga,

Still.

copyright konwomyn, 2009

Lhola Amira: The Harlot's Feet

Lhola Amira is one of the most in demand high end call girls in the country. She has a uniquely intimate perspective on the state of the nation given her select client base (including a host of government officials, a Provincial MEC, business leaders, and one or two key players in the tri-partite alliance). She writes exclusively for Mahala. These are her thoughts.

The jury's still out on whether Lhola's real or not, but Mahala swear she is. This is her second piece and I like this better than her first, so I jacked it without permission, coz Mahala's cool like that. 

FotoCred: Lhola Amira/Mahala  

Jesus is my first encounter with a socialist revolutionaire, but his bible troubles me – it rejects me completely. As a woman, a black person. At least he washed the harlot’s feet. He washed her feet. Which kills me. Naturally I inspect history.

The condition of blackness is serious. Post-1994 has changed nothing for most of us.
This is where I am at: lynched. I’m in a dire space, the illusion of the Rainbow Nation has dissolved. The truth is painful. Out of black suffering I’m at black depression.

The burden of womanhood. The intensity of being black. The mirror lies to me and says, “you’re fine, Lhola, everything is fine.” I walk streets and hear them echo, “no need for your volatile blackness here!” My anger mutates. I seek solace in books at home alone about ‘revolutionary men’. Can they free me from the echoes?

I write my own way out. On hotel stationary. When he’s washing up. When he’s done. These after moments in hotel rooms. These songs of myself. His money in my hands.

My body is written by unknown authors
My limbs are parted by faceless men.
My thighs are gutted ghetto streets.
What more can you take from me?
You pollute my insides. Yet you scramble for me still,
Drawing lines like veins.

Can the revolution still-to-come save me? When my own black skin yearns for whiteness. How weird is that? How sad. Would that ease the pain? Was Fanon right? Was Biko? Is our contemporary Black Wash working? Illusions of whiteness. So many traps. But I’ll write my way out. On hotel stationary. When he’s washing up. When he’s done. These songs of myself. His money in my hands.

I’m the dark cannibalistic sister
Of your fever dreams, your Tarzan dreams.
I am the slave, cotton weaving the modern age.
Made from the core of a universe. I’m black.
Even my words are not my own. In your tongue.
I am a coconut. I’m waiting to evolve. Waiting to take on my white self.
But my black body denies me.
Lynched, my feet dangle, swaying, after this beautiful violence.
My womb sings its painful symphony
My womb’s a commodity
And my eyes look upon your whiteness John, trick, stud
And I smile with dry lips dry, cracked lips that say
Am I white yet? Have I suffered enough?

This is it. Tomorrow I stop. No more. I’ll awaken and wash my own feet. But right now I’m in-between spaces where nothing exists. Until he comes back for more.

Twitter Be Like African Drums

Big Think Video

....Margaret Atwood says:

 ...People used to perform their lives this way to themselves in their diaries, and also through letters to other people.So for me, anything that happens in social media is an extension of stuff we were already doing in some other way. 

So, it’s all human communication. 

And the form that most closely resembles the “tweet” is the telegram of old, which also was limited because you paid by the letter. And so short communications very rapidly sent. So all of these things, the postal service, et cetera, they’re all improvements, if you like, or modernizations of things that already existed earlier in some other form. 

Even African tribal drums, for instance, could send very complex messages over great distances. They were very rapid, they were very well-worked out and communications could just go like wildfire using that medium of communications. So all of this stuff is what we do now, but it’s not different in nature from what we have always done, which is communicate with one another, send messages to one another, and perform our lives. 

We’ve been doing that for a long time.

Atwood fotocred - J.Allen

more from Atwood: 1. http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/mar/29/atwood-in-the-twittersphere/

2. http://bigthink.com/ideas/24253

fisttap bombastic element

Black History Month

I 

just 

remembered

A 

time 

when

 I 

am 

just

 black

Just 
one
 month 
this year.

...I am a black man 
throughout all the days of the year. 

 Please don’t honour me for just 31 days of the year.

Honour me every day and in every way. 

Stephen Lawrence, stabbed to death for being black

Please don’t clutch your handbag 
when you see me walking 
towards you 
or cross the street just to avoid me. 

It’s alright to make eye contact, nod or even acknowledge my presence. 

I’m probably headed to or back from work 
when we meet…
matter of fact
 the other day I was off to a café with a good book in hand. 

Just 
so
 you
 know, 
I 
want
 absolutely
 nothing
 from 
you 
except 
a little respect 
all the days of the year.

Happy

....to those who still believe 
that one month 
is all we deserve.

Aluta Continua...


by
SirNigel

The first verse of this is a haiku by Sir Nigel (www.sirnige.com) and the rest are his words, I felt they sounded poetic so with his permission, I re-arranged his words into a poem. 
copyright: sirnige
All images jacked from Google, too many to do fotocred.

Letter to Cordoba Center on Behalf of a Former Slave

Letter to Cordoba Center on Behalf of a Former Slave
by Mark Gonzalez (checkout his FB page)

Prelude:
I. After the world trade center collapsed, the three century old remains of 20,000 African men, women, children, stolen as former slaves, were discovered underneath.
II. Between twenty and thirty percent of all stolen Africans brought to America as slaves were Muslim.
III. A Letter on behalf of Cordoba Center by one such "slave"

Bismillah

Is an unspoken song on the tongues of the forgotten
    ever wonder where will you pray when your skin has abandoned you
    or what religion is your skeleton?
A note for Manhattan city residents & Mr. President:
if cemeteries have zip codes, air mail this poem to my mother
           courtesy of a masjid’s wings holding my father’s tears

New York: have you forgotten cities are built not by steel but bones
that breath is turquoise colored accessory of skeletons
wearing mahogany skin as Friday prayer best

Bedstuy bones have a Project Runway dream - to runaway from the projects.
Tired of being told their shade is out of season by men in midnight blue suits
attempting to tie a two-thumb thick bow tie noose around their neck.

              Strange Fruit is back.
        The new and the old Black
          in time for spring season.
        Muslims again the designs
breathing chest             heaving
swinging from government branch limbs.

        Dear America: I interrupt your Tea Party
            with reminders of ancestral legacy
             that picked the very leafs you sip
They say thirty percent of all slaves stolen from Africa were Muslim
             denied prayer on ships
             lynched and mocked
           whips for the worshipping
                shot for salaat.

slaves to the dollar enslaving slaves of Allah

When you built the World Trade Center over our cemeteries
did Senegalese mother’s hold drum circle protest at construction companies
for the steel saliva you layered on their children’s coffins?

New York City's living pretty luxurious brag
how little skin they own
that one can see their bones through rib cage as if Prada
fashioned design mannequins after auction block melanin.
While in 2002, twenty thousand African slaves were discovered
underneath the cat walk modeling states of decay
in basement of what is called the World Trade Center

                    Slaves.     Models.
                             both
                     believe in God

One:
tolerated for invoking the name in anorexia’s reverse communion
practices Ramadan 365 days a year
stomach lining sacrifice offering to porcelains altars
in city subsidized stalls and clubs.

Other:
is child hiding with no one seeking
holding song of Quran In decomposed lungs for three centuries
the sum of Saladin’s sons and daughters under one hundred three steel exhales
separated from the ummah by a cracked twin tear
only homage to memory street cipher testimony
a windmill break dance spin cycles of seven
for circles never made around the ka’ba in Mecca.

Cordoba: thank you for daring to call adhan
in a den of lions illiterate to love.
They call our cemetary “Ground zero”
de facto nicknaming us en la tierra negative
below
absence of value

America: tell us
in this   space   moment   century
as you stand over our grave
that 20,000 spirits of Muslim African
slaves still do not have a right
or a place to pray.

New York:
Your building zones built homes upon our bones
Must you again deny us in death our rights you denied us in life.
We, deserve after three centuries to finally say

Bismillahir rhaminir rahim
Know our prayers end as they always do.
assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah
assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah

(May Allah’s peace and blessings be upon ALL & you)

Sincerely signed:

x
x
x
x
x (+ 19,995 times)

TwoCents: This is a very powerful poem and I'm feelin' it, BUT iCaaan't overlook what Arabs did when they brought Islam to Africa. Of course the poet's focus is New 'ork and the current waves of Islamophobia, but because he decides to get historical, why not go the whole mile and talk about everything ..if Amerikkka's up for it, that is. Africans and Arab Muslims are buried there and most likely before them are the Manhatee and Carnasie Indians, some of the the native inhabitants of New 'ork before Peter Minuit, rolled up in his Dutch West India ship and swindled them out of Manhattan for 60 guilders, the equivalent of $23.70.

The African Burial Ground

                               fisttap to my sis, SB in Brazil

SoulMan

James Brown!

James Brown!

James Brown!

Silly youuuuuuu!

You love hip hop

but you don’t know whoooooo

made that beat drop.

He’s the maaaan

with 2 Funky Drummers

in his baaaand

And he made

your Grand-Ma

want to daaaance!

And he made

your Grand Pa

wear tight paaaants!

to do the

camel walk

to do the

mashed potatoes

to do the

funky chicken

to do the

JAAAAAAAAAMES BROWN!

James Brown!

James Brown!

- Saul Stacey Williams, part of a collection of  children's poems 

commissioned by Nickolodeon for Black History Month.

shamelessly jacked from his FB fanpage.

Naija Art

The Fire Next Time

It is a full moon

The recipient of a thousand

Folklore told by toothless griots
And matriarchal grandmothers

Here is the history book

Where warriors and heroes

Become myth and martyr

Also the laughing canvass

Where eunuchs are painted with mockery

And their balls hung dry like

Dry fruits

extract from the poem Full Moon by Victor Ehikhamenor

 

Point of View

and I'll say it again, blogger's pic margins suck!

Victor Ehikhamenor was born in Edo State, Nigeria, and grew up sorrounded by the folk traditions, spiritual festivals and art that now flower in his paintings and poems. He says of his works, "I am looking beyond the surface of everything…to commune with the spirits I have to look beyond the surface. And if we all do we will be surprised at what we see."

from Nigerians in America.com

The Genius That Is, Kgafela oa Magogadi

Johannesburg is historically ‘the city of the white man.’ We hope it has changed. Pass laws are now applied to Africans from the rest of the continent. The darker you are the more ‘illegal’ you look. Who bothers foreigners who look ‘legal’? Is it a Pan-African city in which the whiter or lighter you are, the more ‘legal’ you look. The idea of a Pan-African City is tricky. What does it mean? Is it because there are so many African people impacting on the city’s temperament? Do these Africans beat drums? What is a Pan-European City like? Is it like Cape Town? Is Durban Pan-Indian? Back to Johannesburg; there is the Oriental Plaza in Fordsburg for Indian businesses. There’s Chinatown around Bruma Lake. Is it about ownership? Africans own which part of the city? Africans are either struggling to pay the rent or they trade from street pavements. Is this what we mean by Pan-African spaces? … Africans always looking out for police … Police always raiding ‘illegal’ African vendors… I really need to be advised about the meaning of a Pan-African City. 

I grappled with this in Itchy City:

sobukwe’s flock grow cabbages and sweet potatoes on street pavements to feed clothe and school the children school the children teach them to walk on fire, who says the fire is fictitious, it’s a furious figment of the city’s madness, we point fingers at Nigerians, but who is shooting poison in the arms of wingless angels, heaven help us.

extract appears in the essay "Johannesburg" by Jyoti Mistry in the African Cities Reader, April 2010.

Farsi Denims

redseabluesea

pyjama coups and farsi denims

hang inside my closet

wedged between peace and revolution

for the bargain price of buyonegetonefree,

in the heat of june's power sales.

a color match strikes into a restless flame

of crushed denim and glitzy green scarves

dying the ocean red

giving it the texture of hardness

only the kiss of lead

can give.

it's a death only

beatnik mermaids vibin'

to breakbeats,

on oceanfloors

can resurrect.

and in this trance their

sequined swishing tails

can turn red seas back to blue.

copyright konwomyn 2009, to be published.

i wrote this almost a year ago when neda soltani died - yes the iranian girl even tho' the references are quite obscure. that's the whole point of poetry right - to be obscure, yet creative in your craft, not to the point that no one understands you, but with the right degree of mix of creativity and obscurity to reflect or make comment on how life is lived. dunno if it works here, but ay fashion makes a good metaphor. ; )

in the mood for revolution

               ...and chronically homesick, hapana chakanka f'real

Senzo Shabangu

My Expression

jacked from theFanPal Project.

inhabiting the sun

inhabiting the sun

when earthen stars point to the sky,

look to where the moon stands behind the sun

and there, there you will find me,

spitting tales of fire and making rain

to fall as sun drops of memory on those unborn

so they may remember from where tomorrow came.

copyright konwomyn, 2008

Stolen by Brandon Lacy Campos

For anyone who has ever struggled...never forget

I stole this poem from the voiceless
From the forgotten, struggling, and homeless
I stole this poem from every life
Cut short by violence and domestic strife

I stole this poem from the innocence of Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal
From every political prisoner whose name I can't recall
And anyone who ever died from AIDS
Or wrists bled dry by razor blades
I stole this poem from every single refugee
Whose land was destroyed by this democracy
From invasions of Panama, Haiti and Grenada
And the Cuban exile of the revolutionary Assata
I stole it from Brandon Teena and James Byrd
From every hate crime about which we've never heard
From immigrant workers and Operation Bootstrap
Every black called nigger or Mexican called wetback
From the gas chambers of Auschwitz
And cadaver-filled Iraqi death pits

I stole this poem from the ashes of bombed black churches

I stole this poem from every crack purchase
I stole this poem from four dead girls in Birmingham
I stole this poem from every enslaved African,

Yes, yes, I stole this poem from the tattered dreams of MLK
And from the illegal detainees at Guantanamo Bay
From every child that grew up gay
And decided it was better to runaway
Than face a father's fist or mother's hate
Or to escape Matthew Shephard's fate

I stole this poem from villages bulldozed by Israel
And from every Palestinian ever killed
By the colonial ambitions and Zionist aspirations

Of that unlawful, racist, illegitimate nation

I stole this poem from Fred Hampton as he lay in bed

While bullets entered his sleeping head
From Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman
From every little girl who never had the chance to be a woman
I stole this poem from every lost fight for liberation
From the sabotaged movement for Puerto Rico as a free nation
And the blood that runs from the red, white, and blue
From every CIA sponsored anti-"Marxist" coup

I stole this poem from strange fruit hanging in trees

I stole this poem from experiments at Tuskegee
I stole this poem from thousands of interned Japanese
I stole this poem from millions of dead Vietnamese

I stole this poem from Jones Town and Cape Town

From Nat Turner and John Brown

The continued fight of Aung Sang Suu Kyi
For the realization of Burmese liberty
Dear God, I stole this poem from the working poor
From every brown sister called bitch, cunt, or whore
By brown men who should love them but instead lash out in fear
At a world that would rather that we not be here
I stole this poem from the crushed body of Rachel Corrie
Her death another chapter in Sharon's story
Beginning with genocide and homicide
And Moses' law by which he can't seem to abide
The clear commandment that "thou shall not kill"
And he continues to murder still

I stole this poem and wrote it as prophecy

That what has been will cease to be
The time has come for us to be free
And tear down the constructions of our enemies
To reclaim our histories, take back our lands
To arrive at victory anyway that we can
Either by Martin's or Malcolm's plan
I stole this poem, and I'm giving it back
To ready my people for the final attack
Against a corrupt system that must fall
If we're ever to have liberty and justice for all.

copyright Brandon Lacy Campos
stolen from: http://www.calacapress.com/redcalacarts/redcalacarts-uwbbrandon.html

extracted raps for hondo*

rap 5

protest in the morning

revolt in the evening

war at all hours

until this land is ours

dust is heavier than water

i'm of soil matter

rap 7

i blew the horn for hondo

freedom danced through the door

from circumcision school zambia

to sandbedded namibia

i came home in the wind

leaving the dark bushes behind

with me trusted bazooka friend...

...[i] go on my knees

give the calabash a kiss

invoking the gods of wonder

raising the creators of thunder

we afrika khawuleza kwedini

*hondo means war

extracts from horns for hondo by lesego rampolokeng (1990)

in saul we trust

The GOAT: Saul Williams

ohm

through meditation I program my heart
to beat breakbeats and hum basslines on exhalation

*Saul beatboxes* "ohm"

I burn seven day candles that melt

into twelve inch circles on my mantle

and spin funk like myrrh

*Saul beatboxes* "ohm"

and I can fade worlds in and out with my mixing patterns

letting the Earth spin as I blend in Saturn

niggaz be like spinning windmills, braiding hair

locking, popping, as the sonic force

of the soul keeps the planets rocking

the beat don't stop when, soulless matter blows

into the cosmos, trying to be stars

the beat don't stop when, Earth sends out satellites

to spy on Saturnites and control Mars

cause niggaz got a peace treaty with Martians

and we be keepin em up to date with sacred gibberish

like "sho' nuff" and "it's on"

the beat goes on, the beat goes on, the beat goes "ohm"

and I roam through the streets of downtown Venus

trying to auction off monuments of Osiris' severed penis

but they don't want no penis in Venus

for androgynous cosmology sets their spirits free

and they neither men nor women be

but they be down with a billion niggaz who have yet to see

that interplanetary truth is androgynous

and they be sending us shoutouts through shooting stars

and niggaz be like, "Whattup?" and talking Mars

cause we are so-lar and regardless of how far we roam from home

the universe remains our center, like "ohm"

I am no Earthling, I drink moonshine on Mars

and mistake meteors for stars cause I can't hold my liquor

but I can hold my breath and ascend like wind to the black hole

and play galaxaphones on the fire escapes of your soul

blowing tunes through lunar wombs, impregnating stars

giving birth to suns, that darken the skins that skin our drums

and we be beating infinity over sacred hums

spinning funk like myrrh until Jesus comes

and Jesus comes everytime we drum

and the moon drips blood and eclipses the sun

and out of darkness comes a *Saul beatboxes*

and out of darkness comes a *Saul beatboxes*
and out of darkness comes the

...ohhhmmmm

planetwalkers

i dreamed i walked across the oceans
from the horned temples of axum
i walked to yemen to malaysia
then swam south to the shores of australasia
then back home again to zanzibar,
and migrating westwards,
i gave birth to a son in nigeria whose
dna matches, the twin who walked
on water to papua new guinea.

the news of my twin son caused me
to walk back south, then east to olduvai
in search of my sister who'd left a trail
of how she climbed up the rock of gibraltar,
to germany and england
where she birthed a set of caucasoids
who went as far north as siberia,
skating on ice
and walking on water to america

and down,
down
south
she went
to the basin of the amazon
while some of her children crossed to the caribbean.
 
we have walked
and
walked                                                                                       
and
walked
and
walked
till
there was nowhere left to walk.                

70 000 years later,
we meet again                                                         
you : me,
do you remember, sister?

copyright konwomyn 2010

The Love Push

The Love Push

fading stars and

falling snowflakes

glisten

on a misty mornin'

in london town.

rhyme pushes love

through grime beats,

when i think of him;

my brixton bwoy,

missin' in this missive

written on a misty mornin'

in islington town.

copyright: konwomyn 2009

Burning Floods

CONELLEY POPULATION

I'm rhyming for the seasons & with reason
battling Malthusian confusions
to set right the illusion;
numbers don't equal consumption,
its obsessive possession of the material
that's material and critical
so let's not war over the biological,
its illogical let's talk abt p.o.w.e.r.

The power I possessed
and you re-possessed
I now seek to re-repossess
and I won't desist,
from shaking in my bones
making rain from praying palms
and quaking thunder as they clap
in streaks across the sky,
so that clouds give birth to floods.

FLOOD the toxic ships that defecate on somalia's horns
and drown the drones, bleeding burkhas in helmand,
in the hope of turning blood to oil,
like water was turned to wine,
so lesswillhavemore.
....
so lesswillhavemore.

FLOOD the profiteers from their ponzi temples,
conning penniesfromthemany tomanygivetothefew,
FLOOD the oxygen thieves in carbon plants,
stealing life from tomorrow's babies,
BURN the poison vaccines and monkey viruses
killing themanythathavetheleast
so that thefewwillhavethemost,

BURN the maps that divide and rule,
makin' each one kill one the law of the jungle.
europeanskillafricans,
it's savagery in reverse.
africanskillafricans,
is this the reverse?
europeanskillarabs,
it's terrorism in reverse.
arabskillarabs,
is this the reverse?
europeanskilleuropeans,
fromhastings1066 to kosovo1999
is this the reverse?
is blood the reverse,
for statisticians who hunger
for lessmouthstobefed
while thefewwhohaveplenty
givenot but taketake,
and kill, and kill, and kill.
there is no reverse,
for a dying universe
of greedythugs and emptyguts.

BURN.
to be published in a forthcoming anthology on poetry now! copyright konwomyn, 2009

The Love Push

The Love Push

fading stars and
falling snowflakes
glisten
on a misty mornin'
in london town.

rhyme pushes love
through grime beats,

when i think of him;
my brixton bwoy,
missin' in this missive
written on a misty mornin'
in islington town.

copyright: konwomyn 2009