Amandla Awethu I

Amandla Awethu I

It was 1976.
A fine time to be alive in soweto:
for a change.

(just to be alive is a fine time)

We whispered about it
on the way home from the school
where we were told.

(we hated afrikaans too)

We uttered the word amongst ourselves.
Amandla passed from matchbox house
to squatter camp and back again:
when it came back it was loud as thunder.

(they were our children.
they were children)

We didn’t tell our mothers and fathers.
They were used to existing under apartheid.
in the name of protecting us
they would have denied us the right
to protest against the Boers’ foul policies
but what kind of protection is that?

(we worked in their houses, tilled their fields;
we knew the ugliness they were capable of)

We didn’t want to speak their language.
It was bad enough having them on our land
constantly telling us what to do and how to do it.
And now they wanted to control our speech?
To free our tongues of perversion
we took to the streets.

(we didn’t know.
they didn’t tell us)

The scent of the air changed
and our bodies suddenly knew bullets.
We saw hector being carried.
We ran every which way but the right way
because there was no right way away.

(we ran too
but we ran to the children, our children)

As we ran we picked up stones
and aimed with the precision of hatred
but stones against bullets…
stones against teargas…
fire became our ally
and raged in our defense.

(our children shamed us.
our children shamed us into defending them)

We ran every which way but the right way
because there was no right way away
except for those who ran into exile
except for those who were taken and hidden
in rooms with cement walls
where their cries became the soundtrack
that dominated life in soweto.

(what could we do?)

Love reawakened in those of us who stayed
as our mothers and fathers buried our classmates.
We raised our fists as our mothers and fathers
embraced us with the words amandla awethu
we stomped the ground as nkosi sikeleli ‘iafrika
replaced the burial hymn of amazing grace
and the tears we cried at funerals
became rallying cries for further resistance.

(what else could we do?
they were our children)

 

 

Parsley ~ Rita Dove

Tichaona Chinyelu's avatarTichaona Chinyelu

1. The Cane Fields
There is a parrot imitating spring
in the palace, its feathers parsley green.
Out of the swamp, the cane appears

to haunt us, and we cut it down. El General
searches for a word; he is all the world
there is. Like a parrot imitating spring,

we lie down screaming as rain punches through
and we come up green. We cannot speak an R-
out of the swamp, the cane appears

and then the mountains we call in whispers Katalina.
The children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads.
There is a parrot imitating spring.

El General has found his word: perejil.
Who says it, lives. He laughs, teeth shining
out of the swamp. The cane appears

in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming.
And we lie down. For every drop of blood
there is a parrot imitating spring.
Out of the swamp the cane…

View original post 372 more words

freestyle #2 (working my way back to you, love)

forty-six years
of diaspora living
and finally, i see
myself again.

forty-six years of living
and i refuse to apologize
anymore

unless i am wrong
and wrongness always
has a personal
and a political component

so goodbye, good riddance
and good luck.

i loved you once.
honestly.
as freely as i could
i loved you
and attempted to bring
the best of myself
to our relationship

but the best of me
is revolutionary
and in a non-revolutionary era
that is a form of suicide

and i refuse to commit to that.

forty-six years
of diaspora living
and finally, i see
and love myself

again.

Freestyle #1

The funkiness of fun
absolution from writing
what seems to be
yesteryear.

thoughts and memories,
the heart and science
mingling, interbreeding

casting aspersions
on the culture somehow
still deemed sacrosanct

ii

echoes of theory
resonating in the inner ear
and the third eye

three hundred and sixty degrees
of consciousness includes
ascension to humanity

still, interrelatedly, i say
huey and john brown are reflections
of the gun culture i admire

iii

my thirteen self intrudes
full of the awareness
of dec. 9, 1980

tape deck, white irish
teacher crying.
what is going on?

imagine
my thrown-for-a-loop self
confronting this grief

not quite a decade
before a teacher slipped me
the autobiography of malcolm x

on the sly.
see when i give thanks
it isn’t to smash

it’s an articulation
of how truly, honestly
my life was saved

but maybe your life
doesn’t need saving.
maybe you’re free

because you either
made your piece
or your concession

iv

i don’t know
but i just spent a half hour
hugging my child

who told me
a few hours earlier
that he was too old

for my kisses
but when he hugs me
i’ll be damned if i let go

first

Devil on the Cross (excerpt)

“Literature is the honey of a nation’s soul, preserved for her children to taste forever, a little at a time! Gikuyu said that he who has put something aside never goes hungry. Do you think Gikuyu was a fool when he said that? A nation that has cast away its literature is a nation that has sold its soul and has been left a mere shell.” (Devil on the Cross – Ngugi wa Thiong’o)

For Herman Wallace (and all of them)

68681_527441997342704_896360798_n

Beauty

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
and I be holding beauty
when I glance upon them
theoretically shaping
the future into an afro-
concentric sharpness
that shook
the white power structure
into confronting
a black consciousness
organized with a mandate
and a mission
to dismiss
that old time religion
that said
everything in its place
especially the black race.

A new paradigm of blackness
rooted in a community soliloquy:
ghetto equals colony
and racism is the bastard child
of fascist economies.
Fanon, Malcolm and James
became antidotes
for antiquated theologies
and anti-social pathologies.

In the belly of the imperialistic beast,
in the microcosm of prisons
and the macrocosm of streets
a new paradigm for blackness,
a paradise of struggle,
was created by young soldiers
high school students,
whores and pimps,
drug dealers and NASA employees,
doctors and number runners
heady
ready
and willing
with
fuck that shit
far too many fires lit
from Watts to the Congo

Whitey gotta go
burn baby burn
no ashes in the urn
time for the tide to turn
and put an end to the yearn

discern

panther power was here
turned the police into pigs
and nigs into blacks
figuratively burning effigies
with tactics and strategies
that earned them freedom’s mind.

 

Herman Wallace Dies Just Days After Being Released from 40+ Years in Solitary

Defining the Magic, poem by Charles Bukowski

silverbirchpress's avatarSilver Birch Press

Image
DEFINING THE MAGIC
Poem by Charles Bukowski

a good poem is like a cold beer
when you need it,
a good poem is a hot turkey
sandwich when you’re hungry,
a good poem is a gun when
the mob corners you,
a good poem is something that
allows you to walk through the streets of
death,
a good poem can make death melt like
hot butter,
a good poem can frame agony and
hang it on a wall,
a good poem can let your feet touch
China,
a good poem can make a broken mind
fly,
a good poem can let you shake hands
with Mozart,
a good poem can let you shoot craps
with the devil
and win,
a good poem can do almost anything,
and most important
a good poem knows when to
stop.

Painting: “Hollyhock Pink with Pedernal,” 1937 by Georgia O’Keeffe, Milwaukee Museum of Art

View original post 21 more words

Banned Book Week

A North Carolina school board has banned Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man from its reading list on Monday, citing a lack of “literary value.”

“I didn’t find any literary value,” board member Gary Mason said at the meeting. “I’m for not allowing it to be available.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/18/north-carolina-school-board-bans-ralph-ellisons-invisible-man/

Ohio Schools Leader Calls For Ban Of ‘The Bluest Eye,’ Labels Toni Morrison Book ‘Pornographic’

At an Ohio Board of Education meeting yesterday, Terhar called the novel “pornographic.”

“I don’t want my grandchildren reading it and I don’t want anybody else’s grandchildren reading it,” she said.

http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2013/09/11/state-board-of-education-president-wants-toni-morrison-novel-scrubbed-from-suggested-curriculum/

Beloved children’s book “Captain Underpants” topped the American Library Association’s annual study of “most-often challenged books” in 2012, beating out “Fifty Shades of Grey,” “The Kite Runner,” Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and more.

http://now.msn.com/captain-underpants-tops-banned-books-list-from-american-library-association

Virtual Read-Out

Are you looking for a way to celebrate your freedom to read during Banned Books Week? Consider participating in the Banned Books Virtual Read-out!

Since the inception of Banned Books Week in 1982, libraries and bookstores throughout the country have staged local read-outs—a continuous reading of banned/challenged books—as part of their activities. For the third year in a row, readers from around the world can participate in the Banned Books Virtual Read-Out by creating videos proclaiming the virtues of the freedom to read that will be featured on a dedicated YouTube channel.

The criteria has been updated since 2012. Submit your video by filling out this form.

If you are a bookseller, please contact Chris Finan at chris@abffe.org for special instructions. If you are a librarian, check out the page, “How your library can participate in the Virtual Read-Out,” created by ALA.

Related articles

Ten Minute Writing 1

who would’ve thought that ten minutes of writing would be hard. after all, in the span of a lifetime what is ten minutes? a pot of coffee boiling? the amount of time it takes to fry chicken golden brown on one side? amount of time i spend telling my child to brush his teeth in the morning? it certainly doesn’t take ten minutes to smoke a cigarette but I remember timing 15 min work breaks to make sure I had enough time to puff at least half a cigarette and get back to my desk on time. in the scheme of life, ten minutes is not long at all. however, sitting in front of the computer, keyboard on my lap, looking at the screen, seems like infinity, as does the amount of time hbo wastes on program commercials before finally airing the program I am waiting to watch.