An internationally circulated poem...

Banned in the USA

It seems the Navy finds my poetry (and no doubt my existence) objectionable. Well, I
ain't exactly feelin like they the 'Black Star Liner' either. I got genetic
inclinations that make me dislike the thought of American ships sailing. But I
digress...here in the land where we prize freedom and democracy I am the not surprized
recipient of a knee-jerk response from the
Navy to my poem Knee-Jerk. Please read below:

The subject mail, addressed to an employee at the Naval Inventory Control Point, was
trapped by mail filtering software. The subject mail is not in compliance with
Department of Defense and Department of Navy policy regarding email use as it contains
inappropriate/offensive material. This mail will not be delivered. Please refrain from
sending such material to the Naval
Inventory Control Point in the future.

Original Send Date: 9/23/01

Original Recipient: Donna L Hennessey CONT/OU=PHIL/OU=NICP/O=NAVSUP

End of note trailer left below ... additional comments after the trailer.

----------------
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 10:21:32 -0400
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [soa] Knee Jerk
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Here is the objectionable poem:
Knee-Jerk

If

some one breaks

into your house

What do you do?

Do you think its natural to feed a thief?

Does it make sense to nurture a batterer?

Does it matter?

Should you be strong or right?

Which makes you feel safe at night?

There is a time to fight

There is a time to pray

Confuse the two ... you have no say

â?

Is anyone watching the stage?

Magicians are in play

This trick may be beyond a fade

Madness uncaged

Long ago the clock said 13

When I said pay attention

When I said I seen

Ya called me rabblerouser

Welcome to my dream

Where do you begin?

Where does chaos end?

Is your enemy you?

When I start with red and white I naturally get blu

Imagine my pain

The black nature

Of my bruise

Donâ?Tt let this hurt ya feeins boo

But

Chickens roosting

Feelin real true

Watch the ball bounce

Holler when I hit you

Founded in blood

Forged with a lack of love

Stolen from the indigenous

Built with the labor of folks l call us

In your god we trust

Democracy went bust

Sometime after the tea party

Ya sat out

With malice and due fore thought

To steal

Bamboozle

& Bully

Teddy only charged cleared hills

& if the Iroquois only knew

that after you stole the long house book

you would pollute the essence

like crooks

in James holy book

they would have never wrote it

only told it

as your ears flapped in the wind

on your severed skin

You killer of buffalo self determination and human aspiration

You container of dreams and home grown ambition

harness us all so your destiny can be manifest

heaven forbid we second guess genocide

truncation of nations

wholesale annihilation of the fabric of usness

so that you may breathe in the key of unrestrained greed

ya self ya feed

let the rest bleed

sow seeds of sedition

and

gasp in horror at your harvest

ya

counterthink

nature

you an offense

to natural

you propped up by the sheep amuck shepherds that feed on the flock

ya wanna drag me in a scrape ya ass got in by being the bully on the block

but ya call me crazy if I take a police station with 7 mad niggas and two

glocks

cuz

ya knocking innocent heads up in my spot

Ya talk about peace

But

only feel when its you talkin

in a space poor folks

know not to lite

so

they keep walking

Round in circles

instead a

stalking ways to outline you in chalk

They trying to fit into your blocks

Blind to the tramtization

Of

Acculturation

At

Any price

Only the most high knows where the madness stops

when those forced to exist on force fed ****

scream in disconnected rage

"I wanna feed some body ****"

I refuse to lose the lite up in diz

Smoke and mirrors ainâ?Tt new in this ****

In a valley of deception

Sudden truth would be a flipped script

Excuse me for questioning the authorship

Or better yet kiss my past

While ya search for conscripts

I remember a note somewhere

That says miss me with this

Here in the land o f crooked house bluz

I got my own agenda

That will not stand an appendage

Buzy trying find its own legs

Screaming with absolute authority

No justice no peace.

Ret to die on my feet

Tired of living on my knees

Free me

And ya wont have

To remind me

Ya the land of the free.



Wordslanger 2001
©


I stand by every syllable of it. I never sent it to the Navy, what I look like
spitting at the devil. I have no control over what the people in the Navy choose to
read. Son's of Africa is a voluntary subscription electronic publication and if the
powers that be in the Navy do not wish their personnel to not subscribe then they
should handle that with them. As I understand my first amendment rights I have the
right to voice my opinion and you have it above.

In my article 'Response with Violence ?/Response to Violence' I stated:

"Things have become more restrictive here overnight. People around the world tremble,
many wary, rest uneasy as past recipients of our foreign policy.

We can't go stomping around the world like a petulant child hitting everyone we don't
like...it ain't cool, it ain't right, and if it was an attack from without somebody is
willing to try and stop us. Answer the question from the
attackers point of view, you asked if someone attacked your home should you strike
back? Without justice peace is impossible.
Perhaps America should learn to speak another language. I know it may be difficult the
whole founded in blood maintained in blood thing withstanding if we continue to speak
in violence others will communicate in a language we can understand.

I have left open the door that this was an act from with in...the United States has
shown me that it knows how to set acceptable limits to accomplish a task. I know there
is no great love of human life exemplified in the dealings of my government. I am
aware of corruption, malfeasance, dereliction of duty, misappropriation, fraud and
attempts at genocide...I don't find the scenario of US government orchestration or
involvement implausible with the desired end being carte blanch goose stepping abroad
and at home.*
No matter how I approach the problem I arrive at the same doorstep.

The flags I see fluttering disturb me...I couldn't fix on why until now ...now I hear
it echoing in my head in my own voice as I child...I pledge allegiance to the
flag....One Nation, INDIVISIABLE,..with justice and liberty
for ALL...When?

Wordslanger

As a side note:
I am the wrong person to teach that justice comes from the barrel of a gun..."

Again all the hate mail withstanding I stand by every word of it and you aint heard
the last of me. I have never been silent about homegrown oppression or what i feel
viable solutions are...i have no intention of joining the majick
pony show in the third ring, you better check the pedigree I live in fire, heat don't
skeer me.
*A friend who is a political analyst told me to watch my back that this is what Bush's
newly created 'Department of Homeland Security' is for, to round up the people who
disagree with the 90% (??) of the populace who are ret to die for what this country
stands for.

Well, if they come for me, I got some shit they need to hear, no doubt. I am about
slangin get free words for a populace needy of lite...I take my calling seriously.

So I will continue to say what I see, if ya don't like it then dont read me. For my
folks who got they eyes open and can feel where I am coming from let me know you out
there. Hit me up, and counterbalance some of this hate they heaping on me. I just need
to know you out there and I ain't tending a flame that no one can see. Choose your
light carefully and remember wordz are easy it takes the actionof human hands to move
an agenda.

One,
Word
Drum Major 4 The Bantu Nation
Live From The Crooked House 2001

Print Note

Environmental Terrorists
NO BS! in Vallejo: Poetry for Bechtel/Shell
(a chapbook commemorating the Listen & Be Heard poetry marathon on Oct. 24, 2002 at Rafael's Bar in Vallejo)

with poetry by:
Peter Bray
Martha Cinader
Bob Cowan
Skip Dodge
Charles Ellik
Lawrence Festin
Vena Ford
Mike Giuffrida
Cedric Jones II
Juanita J. Martin
Tony Mims
Kenny Mostern
Yvette Obias
John Pray
Chelle Stockman
Teasha
Felicia Thompson
Glynda Tejada Velasco
Norman A. Woods
WordSlanger

edited and with a foreword by Martha Cinader
associate editor Glynda Velasco
cover art by Kards1

Cinasphere
http://www.Cinasphere.com

Environmental Terrorists
NO BS! in Vallejo: Poetry for Bechtel/Shell
copyright 2002 by the Cinasphere

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

Rise Singing

This morning I rose still singing
Freedom on my mind
I rise to shape destiny
sure strong black hands
fierce proud heart singing
I shall be heard singing above the noize
No serenade but a battle shout
Warriors rise up singing
Praise the strength to fight one more day
Sharpen your swords / take a stance
Can I hear your swords sing?
Put your soul in that swing
Righteous men stand strong singing
make your voice felt in your stance
Solider women rise singing
destiny blooms from the inside
Wise Children ascend singing
feet planted minds a mile wide
Come true world,
Come singing.

Time is not on our side.

Wordslanger © 2000

Word

This is for the word
Leaping up off the page
Bangin off all da wallz
tinklin like jazz piano
as I slap it to attention
say my name,
whoze ya mama now?
no ambiguities no innuendo
in your face is how I like it
holwin up against the wall
I like red words you know they
9 mile high ebonicly-euronicy
incise are ya gittin my
drift of words
rainin on ya like fire slammin synergy
& vision
cohesively coercive propaganda
actively soliciting activism
mental menus meant to move ya
wordz spun like lite
loving leading to the
illumination livin in you
Like Dat!

Wordslanger ©

Think

Before
you fly
in
too
Think…
the wide abyss
is an illusion
it is not
really
there
Think…
Ignore the smoke
look into the mirror
Do their mothers tears
weigh less than your mothers?
Do their fathers not gnash their teeth
In loss of only sons?
Do their babies weep less
when their Mothers are raped?
Do the orphans have roadmaps
to humanity to fill their empty bellies?
Think…
How
is this man
different from you
What
does he want
that you do not
crave for yourself
you taught the world to sing
what language did you use?
As ye sow.
Can you
see the harvest
in the mirror?

Wordslanger © 2001

Blessings are Due Day

Blessings are Due

Smoked Turkey
Oyster dressing
Cranberries
Mashed potatoes/gravy
Shells & 7 cheeses
Sweet potato pie
Mustard Greens W smoked Turkey tails
Home Made Ice Cream
Roast and Butter Potatoes
Tossed Prawn Green Salad

I started the day with prayer over John Coltrane, read an essay or two from Marvin X’s new joint, between finishing up the feast. The house is full of the smells of oyster dressing. It is early in the morning. I have been up since 5:00. As time ticks along I move into a little Harold Melvin, The Ojays, James Brown and some Gil Scott Herron. This early play list is the best of my mother’s music, the stuff that to this day moves me and speaks to the struggle still being waged in the Nation in the Nation. Tell em James, still black, still proud. There is a roast as tender as butter. The smoked turkey is still steaming form the oven. The greens were done last night. The candied yams are just ready and you are right Harold Melvin there ain’t no stopping me now. Best believe in a minute or two we gonna Wake up Everybody.

I remember Thanksgiving at my mother’s house. I remember it in musical clips. Certain songs bring back certain years. There was always the music. These select memories are mostly good memory and they continue to improve with age. These memories are for the most part from before the days I realized the glittery grit American holidays rise from. This was before it dawned on me why Natives, most likely don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, at least not with the same sentiment as Middle America. Wherever that is.

I grew up in the so-called margins in the Nation in the Nation. It was the sixties. The world was changing and we were hopeful and on the edge of something. I was months away from discovering the “movement”, growing in the hothouses of urban centers, I had never thought of. Even Mother was expanding her horizons she had discovered the necessity of politics. She became an A Phillip Randolph Society member. The music in our house reinforced this time of expansion and recreation in our house and in our conscious awareness. I was in the space before the tipping point. I was just discovering Langston and Baraka. I was just beginning to understand that the world was bigger than Mother’s house and the school library. Tradition was being discovered and created. Dysfunctionality or perceptions of it can be considered a tradition. And so it is we came to the tradition of Thanksgiving in my Mother’s house.

The assembling of the groceries was a primary task that would be started at least a week before the actual preparation. The supplies for the mammoth meal came from a variety of stores my mother was guided by the specialties of particular markets. A turkey ordered at a quality meat market, live shellfish from the Chinese grocer, the newest 45’s from the black record store and so forth.

Thanksgiving started the night before fueled by large amounts of Cutty Sark my mother directed her kitchen crew of children with me being the eldest. I picked bunch after bunch of fresh greens, snapped and shelled peas and beans. I was the DJ spinning stacks of 45’s or selecting LPs from the huge stack. Music was one of the few things my mother and I shared. We loved it. I drank her music in. She had great taste. She liked a wide variety and a lot of it was what I would have bought myself. Music made the task melodious as well. I remember being the chief chopper, onions, celery, bell peppers, were minced within an inch of their lives under a sharp knife. The fragrant piles went from chopping board to bowls for mother’s use as the most succulent meal began to take shape. Chopping completed I would move on to peel things that need to be peeled. After my peeling duties were over I was a masher and occasionally a mixer. I guess it all comes under food prep and I was our food processor.

There was a rhythm in that kitchen that I have learned to appreciate. Mother’s kitchen hummed. She was everywhere. One minute her hands in soapy bleach water washing every dish as it was dirtied. The next she was checking a bird stuffed with oranges, apples, celery, and onions. From there to the pot of greens picked fresh from the garden that morning. Even the garden cooperated with Mother’s rhythm. Peppers and onions ripened on cue. I succumbed to exhaustion only at a point when my help no longer mattered. It would have never occurred to me to fall sooner or to complain. Mother’s rule was law. As I recall the later the hour the older the music Mother played. I would wake in the morning to the sounds of her moving in the kitchen and BB King, Jimmy Reid, twanging in the speakers.

I have learned to appreciate the ease of that time with my mother. She taught me to cook without ever writing down a recipe. I still measure my prowess in the kitchen by my mothers. We talked about things we never talked about at any other time. She let me read poetry to her. She asked questions about the authors and what I thought the poems meant. We did theater improvs with characters that suited our whimsy at the moment. We sang over Aretha Franklin. We were known to argue over the lyrics and dissolve into laughter to discover we were both wrong. This was the only time any of these things ever existed between us. The only time I ever remember my mother telling me I was beautiful and that she loved me was in a holiday kitchen. She was relaxed committed to be in this space for hours doing one of the things she did well and had a passion for. I have noticed that when they are happy in the work of their hands even the most irascible people are approachable. Mother was known in our neighborhood for the table she set. Her salmon croquettes were legendary. My father was never at a lost for a fishing buddy. Mother’s croquettes sealed the deal. She made jams, jellies, canned fruit and made homemade ice cream. Coconut cake or German chocolate take your choice they were made from scratch and melted in your mouth. Her candied yam and sweet potato pie game was sharper than my grandmother’s and that’s saying something. She made hogshead cheese form the whole head of a hog with the glazed eyes staring. She would scramble the brains into eggs and savor the delicacy that not one of her disgusted albeit astonished kids showed any curiosity about. She excelled at holiday meals and she had a record collection a DJ or beat maker would kill to own. On holidays we dove into the stack and the music is foever connected to my holiday memories.

Our dinner table groaned with excess that did not seem like excess with Ray Charles as a soundtrack. Two meats and at least six sides above and beyond the traditional necessities and a choice of at least three deserts were the foundation of a holiday feast. There are some differences in Mother’s table and mine. Both households full of children, debt, and with an eye on the same struggle but in different points in time. We are of a line but we are in different perspectives.

The machinery in the kitchen is and is not the same. I am still chief chopper and I have not been able to establish the holiday rapport in the kitchen my mother invoked. The relationship with my children is different. There is no pork on my table. Cutty is not what fuels the party. We collectively have created for ourselves a different kind of baggage and out of this baggage arises another kind of tradition. The music once the oldies walk us though memory has changed as well. It describes our place in the struggle as clearly as the music of my mother’s Thanksgiving did.

Hairdoo, Hi-Beats, Dead Prez, Common, Marley, TuPac, and some Talaam Acey will be a part of the soundtrack today. A little Ise Lyfe some Amir Suleman and some of that Boots and the Coup along with some Askari X balanced against some Franti will set the tone for our Blessings are Due day. This is the mental food I will serve up along with the macaroni and seven cheeses and my own version of candied yams with Saigon cinnamon. I am famous in my own way for my holiday table. There will also be room for some of that Turf Starz and The Pack the Hypfy sound my kids are recreating themselves to. This ain’t my mother’s Thanksgiving. But we got here via mothers house. If she were here I don’t know if she would approve of the music or the table. But things change and the times have kept suit.

Led by the music and the times that make the music we are the same and different. Mother’s music said the time; it was a product of the place, politics, and the people’s relationship to these things that shaped the lyric and the rhythms they rode upon. We are
closer to the bone when we stop to examine place, politics, the times, and the people’s relationship to these things. The history in between has taken us at least in lyric to the grit of the streets. Made us more graphic in our pathology and in our effort to be free of it. I submit there has always been sex and violence in popular music it is the degree and lack of veneer I believe shocks. But again I say it relates to how we live. It is connected to our perceived potential and a reaction to the American dream’s evolution into crass commodity that drives commercial/corporate rap. As TuPac said Rap can do what it has to in order to survive, to make money, but Hip Hop has a responsibility to the streets. I’m a hip-hop head, sometimes, as out of step in my house as my mother would be. I’m not into the disposable music that will only be a novelty if anything at all in 10 years. I see a commonality in my taste and my mother’s. While eclectic our taste runs towards that which inspires, uplifts.

Today I am happy to be aware there is still music being created to ignite the consciousness and reveal us standing in the storm, still black, and still proud. There is still a counter-dialogue. I’d like to think if my mother was still alive she might find some point of recognition in the new dialogues in music, might find the message familiar. We are in the belly, we need to be awake and aware, and understand that we are powerful. +

The house is alive as friends come and go and the children float in and out. The politics fly as good-natured jabs are traded and sweet potato pie disappears. Memories are shifted as we stuff our selves on the food and each others thoughts surrounded by the soundtrack of the times. Franti says everyone deserves music and I believe it was June Jordan who said no one has the right to choose the next generation’s freedom song.

Years from now this family in some configuration will meet on the day my mother called Thanksgiving and I call Blessings are Due Day. They will feast. I can’t predict the menu or the conversation but I know it will come from being in this house and listening to this music. It will be recycled to recreate my times, and me, my notch on the struggle tree. The music that lives will remind them of the times in which it was created and without doubt these will be remembered as the good times and what is written here and remembered will be passed on like a fine recipe. I wonder what the music of those times will sound like.

Living like blessings are due, here in the belly…

One Struggle,

WordSlanger
2006

Artist Statement

WORDSLANGER Wordz & Resistance An Artistic Statement The power, music, and potential of words have always fascinated me. I believe that a language spoken by living people is organic, alive, with the intention of those who speak it. I have a deep connection to African American Vernacular English, recognizing it as a language forged to mediate and resist the trauma to personal and cultural identity experienced by the African who found himself kidnapped, forced to traverse the middle passage under the most horrific conditions imaginable, and then as a captive, forced into servitude in a SorrowLand. Concurring with the American Linguistic Society in its opinion that AAVE, (African American Vernacular, Ebonics), is a legitimate language, partially derivative of American English, as American English is an emergent of English. It is also seeped in African cultural unconsciousness and a product of the captured African's conscious desire to hold on to elements of his/her own culture. I write in both languages, Ebonics and so called Standard English. I allow the message wanting to be born to select the language of its life. Some messages insist on both. So, sometimes I write in a mixture of both languages. Doubling my voice, doubling the message, sending the words to mainstream and the underground at the same time, sometimes saying something different to each, knowing some people understand both. I speak my double consciousness in a double language created by Africans becoming Americans, an ongoing process. The esteemed Nathan Hare once commented that my handling of language is a combustible mixture of Ebonic and Eurocentric language styles. I write about what I have lived and witnessed in my lifetime. I write about the issues, not written about in mainstream media and the events that shape the world we live in. I write from the vantage of an insider in The Nation within the Nation. My view here is that of a dweller in a SorrowLand, longing for a home that no longer exists. As such, my only choice is to build here as my ancestors have for centuries. My art focuses on our reality, our upliftment, it seeks to amplify who we are, and what we must do in order to midwife the dream still deferred. My gift, my contribution, to the ongoing struggle of the North American African to create home in the SorrowLand is my words. Strung in a fashion reflective of our position with in the socio-cultural composition of America; unassimilated, outside and off center in the melting pot, my words are tools of resistance. In my piece Composition piece I pay juba to the influence of Africa in America they are the shaping influence of all culture here whether the practitioners are conscious of this or not. This is the context in which I create. This is the source, root, and reason I am an artist. Again I pay juba to the "spirit sung to bones on ocean floors, the truth and the metaphor passed on to me, my children and yours, cuz every generation got a freedom song, cuz for generations we ain't been free, ... I pay juba to oceans, drums, dusty dance, Congo Square, the Harlem renaissance, the black arts movement gave movement to my movement, and i refuse to let them paint all hip hop with a gangsta rep, cuz we know u know we know, from the Gelede to the Two- Step, we stay in step wit the drum that u ain't heard yet, u can still AfriKa, but u can't make her forget..." This poem is resistance, naked on the side of a hill, clothed only in its on determination. Ayodele WordSlanger Nzinga, MA, MFA

Welcome to the House of the Rising Sun

Word of the Rising Sun

Like an erstwhile Ethiopian
they say Christ will return again
Bury me standing for like myths
of the King I will come again
born on the whirlwind of the continuum
bearing tales in blood memory
of struggle waged infinitely
to bring the light to a tardy
to bed night to mid wife
the birth of third sight
to stem the tide of won’t know
see the path but don’t go
Any day the spirit rises will be a Sunday
All eyes open seeking The One way
Possibility jumps off the back of one day
into the arms of another as doors close
windows open

Only hope and struggle are truly eternal
The former resides in my heart
To the latter I have given my hands

One,
Word