Summer has long been over weather-wise and on the calendar. In fact, today, I was thinking about taking some of my fall/winter clothes out from the shed. Today I am concluding the spring/summer season at The Song Is... with Bola Ade's poems. Bola is a former student of my friend Avis D. Matthews. Avis sent me a selection of Bola's poems, noting how powerful they are. I agree! I also think that they are a fine follow-up to my former student Alex Conrad's poems.
The Masters Equal
I
love this new age of outrage.
Children
adults
light
to dark skin
Black
Women, men, and children
Rushin
the streets, signs in hand.
Armed
with knowledge.
Fighting
for freedom In this 21st century Selma.
Mr.
Officer, President, Governor do you see them?
Us,
we the people.
Our
Natural sisters
Loc’d
brothers and fathers
Will
you please free them?
You
pelt us with insults and bullets.
Hang
us by our white collars
Because
Jim Crow didn’t stop us
Slavery
didn’t stop us
Ferguson
didn’t stop us
When
did officers of the law become oppressors of the colored?
When
did we reach a time
when
an 18 year old black boy is
more
likely to be cut down by 8 bullets
Than
to be elevated with 8 scholarships
Why
are black boys and girls being told to
perm,
cut, & tame their hair
To
de-culture and deaden anything that
Corporate
America deems “unsophisticated” and “urban.”
When
did our melanin become a generational albatross
Why
do black parents have to prepare their children
For
being colored in this world.
For
the cross that they must bare
The
racism that they must fare
The
glass ceiling above their heads.
The
closed doors.
The
segregated spaces they dare not venture to.
The
ancestors of Black Americans were once shackled to boats
Raped,
beaten, set ablaze and hung from trees.
The
ancestors of Africans were “set free” in to the poverty and corruption
Left
behind in the wake of colonization
So
yes.
I
am in love with this new age of outrage
Where
mental shackles are being broken
So
our sons can do more than line the streets with their dead bodies,
&
our daughters can be more than
vessels for objectification
&
If war must be wrought in this 21st century Selma
So
freedom may truly reign in this land of the perpetually oppressed
*
place right hand to chest*
“Then
we the negroes do solemnly swear
To
decimate every racially imposed barrier fashioned against us.
So
that the principles of real liberty, and real justice for all
shall
truly come to be.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Adult
This
is the real world I fought so hard to see.
I
used to be a sheltered 13year old wishing my parents would just leave
Get
off my back, get out of my face, get out of my space.
I
would yank, pull, shove, and try to fight my way in to
this
place…this magical place…
filled
with freedom, sleepless nights, Adult things.
The
idea of being grown used to swirl around my mind like some
perpetually
unattainable fantasy.
I
used to write superficial poetry about these imaginary people
that
didn’t understand me and who only wanted to clip my wings.
Till
one day I stood perched. Every muscle in my body clenched.
I
no longer had to want to grow. Life was now shoving me
head
over heels off the steep cliff of childhood.
In
to a world filled with thinking about a
life career, dreaming of changing the world
dotted
t’s and I’s, drinking not for fun but to forget
To
forget the $20,000 student loans, and the fact that mommy and daddy
just
got a divorce. & I found out love isn’t all roses and daises
&
people that look like me get shot in the streets
and
tuitions prices hiked up so we’re all rioting
&
yet everyones so stoked you’re in college
But
you have no idea what you want to be.
who
you’re going to be.
How
you’re going to get there
So you light up the THC.
Fill
your cells with ecstasy.
Do
everything to forget the reality
The
reality of the fact that everything you have is everything you wished for
That
your fantasies didn’t factor in the reality of reality
when
you desperately wanted to adult.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
La Femme
To
be an enlightened woman is to remain perpetually amused.
It
is to live with a perpetual smirk plastered across your face.
To
act as if you know not, when you know all.
To
laugh inwardly at how uncomfortable they are with your strength
To
grace through crowds unscathed, unmoved, unwavering. Stoic.
An
enlightened woman is the closest man could ever get to godliness
Not
to worshipping a god. But, to being one.
Being
an enlightened woman means
Possessing
the ability to carry and bring forth life.
The
ability to carry the world in the palm of your hands
Being
an enlightened woman is to be tempered by experience. —
Experiences
steeped in pains only one of your high caliber could ever endure.
Being
an enlightened woman means exuding a rare concoction of stoic positivity,
brilliance, and beauty.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hotep sh*t
Queen this Queen that. I struggle
with the surfaceness of this Queen phase. The pretentiousness of it. The lie.
The look in the mirror & tell yourself your ancestors all wore heavy
eyeliner, carried gold and diamond encrusted crowns on their heads, &
sprawled hieroglyphics on walls. When truth be told many of our ancestors were
peasants. They were the ones upon whose backs the great pyramids where forged.
Stoic statues were etched. Not in their image..but by their hands...Everyone is
not royalty. If we lived in a world where everyone had a castle. Who would live
in the regular homes across the ocean. Who would be regular. Everyone does not have
an ancestor from Cairo. Some people came from the slums of Sierra Leone...the boys
squatters of Nigeria. This Queen and King phase that I notice a lot of blacks
going through...is almost like a parody a simplistic replica of African
culture..In my country I am a princess. My father is a would be King. But this
neither adds nor detracts from me. My queendom is the empire I seek to build.
Not the one I presume my great grand father had.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My Scarlet A
Like
the waves crashing in to the rocks by the sea shore
We
have fought.
Tirelessly.
Time and Time again
Like
a perpetually revolving door:
I
have been both the prisoner and the warden
I
have caged and buried you
Only
to watch you seep through the cracks
I
have laced noose around your neck
And
watched life leave your eyes
Only
for you to rise again
This
time bigger
and
stronger
more
enraged
More
erratic
More
menacing
More
terrifying
Than
ever before.
I
have cowered before you.
I
have
Submit
myself
to you
Time
and Time again.
Like
a perpetually revolving door:
I
have waged the grandest civil wars
I
have orchestrated the greatest coup’s
I
have drafted the most amicable of separations
I
have pleaded for my freedom
and
offered you the most grandiose reparations
I’ve
asked for nothing but peace
Yet
you demand war
So
this time:
I
will not try to plead you away,
instead
I will listen and honor you
I
will not take up arms against you
Instead
I will be still.
….I
will be still.
Dissonance
These
days I feel the ache in my knees,
The
sweet agony of release.
This
caricature can not delineate my soul any longer
And
my back dare not carry this burden any further.
So
I write.
Erase.
Rewrite.
Rip
and burn away the history
The
memories.
The
ones I’m forced to regurgitate.
The
ones I feel boiling in the pits of my belly
The
ones that spew forth
When
Words
come tumbling from my mouth
Coated
in the devils elixir
Acid
burns demanding my silence
As
the truth strums at the back of my throat
So
I write.
Erase.
Rewrite.
Trying
to undo history,
Create
future.
Remake
present.
Be
God.
Disinterest
…And honestly I knew.
I knew the moment our lips locked.
There was no spark, no flicker.
I was dry in all the wrong places
The tectonic plates didn’t shift or shudder
There were no eruptions, or cataclysmic implosions.
I didn’t feel the irrepressible urge to inhale her
like her lungs held the last bit of oxygen on the planet.
My hands didn’t wander to places they didn’t belong.
I didn’t wonder what she tasted like
or felt like.
She was resting potential, with no catalyst..
She was a warm body
& I felt…..
Nothing.
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I'll finish with some music. I want to find something appropriate.
Here is Marquis Hill's "The Way We Play/Minority": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUTnelul4W0 He is a young trumpeter, but this song is more than just notes.
This is his "Fly Little Bird Fly": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD3cqMtKxvk
Here he is with his Blacktet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxi9E5AkoXk
His "If We Must Die" is inspired by the poetry of Claude McKay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1ViKurxwUQ
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