Sustenance

She throws her voice
like a boomerang
that should return
but doesn’t.

She seeks her voice
everywhere except
her own larynx
where it withers
on fleshy folds
and fibroids.

Unspoken, words
tunnel through her
until they tumble
from her pores.

Indelibly linked
she sustains
poetry.

 

© 2015 Tichaona M. Chinyelu

The Pantry of a Modest Foodie: Ideas on “How To” Provision Your Table with Limited Means

As a home gardener (and amateur foodie) I found this interesting…and helpful!

michaelwtwitty's avatarAfroculinaria

JML Buying Cymlings in Mississippi at an HBCU Sponsored Farmer's Market JML Buying Cymlings in Mississippi at an HBCU Sponsored Farmer’s Market

I don’t really want to make this a long post…really I don’t…..so I’m going to try not to.

I am supposed to be working on book proposals and that will happen ASAP, I just need to get my juices flowing at 2:24 AM.  Apologies for rambling in advance…this is more of a brain deluge than a blog post…

Let’s talk about the pantry for the moment….I am a very very very very very financially modest man..let’s get that straight.  When the Ancestors see that I’m following directions…I get blessed, other times I struggle through the muck like everyone else.  However I’ve had to keep up with the big girls and boys in the food world both near and far.  That has meant thinking deeply about how I cook at home and what it means to come up with new…

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Absence in Review

It’s been a long time since I last posted. Life has been lived. The Seed (he hates when I refer to him as such) has grown. Flowers and vegetables are blossoming/blooming on my balcony garden. The life I am living now is totally different from the life I thought about living in my twenties and early thirties. Letting King Bee pollinate my flower changed everything and I give thanks…and praise.

But as The Seed regularly reminds me, I should share with my anonymous readers what is going on. According to my YouTube aficionado, I should be much more on my writer’s grind. Part of me agrees with him. Another part of me says I am not tied to any contract where I have to produce work according to an agreed upon schedule. I am free. And if, while I am free, words are not coming to my satisfaction, that is, ultimately, okay. I am a literary daughter of Toni Morrison who says “”Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don’t try to write through it, to force it. Many do, but that won’t work. Just wait, it will come.”

So I wait while writing down whatever comes with no current thought of editing or fitting said drips and drabs into a poem in progress because their vibration seems to align. I am okay. I have faith (read I refuse to write discordant poems simply to continue to lay claim to the title of writer). I wait with the understanding behind me of a piece of a poem that I wrote when I was 22. I tried to fit into everything I had written up to that point. Almost 10 years later, devoid of my notebooks, memory kicked in and provided me with the lines that completed, perfectly, the piece I was writing. In other words, sometimes you can write something that is beyond your development at the time of writing and you just have to wait.

So I am waiting and I have faith that this period of non-production (in the writer’s sense) will lead to something that will be worthy of the wait…and the faith.

While I wait, or rather, concurrently with the wait, is the homeschooling of my son and since it is summer, growing vegetables and flowers on my balcony garden. We recently took a trip to the DC/Maryland area.

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At the Everlasting Life restaurant in Capitol Heights, Maryland, a black owned vegan restaurant. They had the most amazing  macaroni and cheese!

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At the National Zoo

 

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Paddle boating on the Tidal Basin at the Jefferson Memorial. We did it during a previous trip to Brooklyn and he couldn’t resist. That face told me now is not the time for discussions of Sally Hemings.

 

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It is said that you leave the best for the last and the best of this trip, selfishly speaking, was attending the Unveiling of the Spring Issue of Reflections Literary & Arts Magazine of Prince Georges Community College.

 

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Passenger side view of Wilbur Cross Pkwy

We drove to Maryland and back. Scratch that. I drove to Maryland and back with my very GPS-able pilot. I was so happy to see the sign that we were back home although the drive through Wilbur Cross Pkwy in Connecticut was absolutely lovely; despite seeing two deer dead by the side of the highway.

 

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While in Maryland, I was happy to meet Khadijah Ali-Coleman, she of the lovely voice and spirit!

 

 

 

 

We were in Maryland to attend the Unveiling of Prince Georges Community College’s literary journal, Reflections. I had submitted a couple of pieces which were accepted so decided to attend…and drive there and back from Cambridge, MA.  The New Jersey Turnpike is something else and that something is not nice. I had planned to visit friends in New Jersey and got so turned around on that divided highway I said something less polite than “forget it” and ended up spending the night at a Holiday Inn in Rahway, a prison town.

The next day we drove home sweet home and I began thinking of what I wanted in my balcony garden this year.  Part II of the Absence in Review will center around the summer progress of said garden.

Praisesong for the Sun (Revised)

Today you shined, today you defined
the thrill of the unmaligned mind
and love, returned in kind.

Time itself unwinds and I am of one mind.
Spirit and body aligned, love for humankind
I feel as well as find. Am I of sane mind?

Have I joined the kingdom of the blind
where oppression is not enshrined?
I must be losing my blighted mind.

Is my state of mind a design?
The sun seems disinclined
in the manner of the divine
to provide reason or rhyme.

I want to take a hard line
but my anger, the sun declined
and I stay in a lovely frame of mind.

I blame it on the sunshine,
calling it an enemy of mine
but the sun stays benign
and I know I’m out of line.

BiNoc

the cold came down nordic. each flake landing on its sibling, incrementally adding more depth to the blanketing whiteness. the only contradicting spots roads no one was traveling on. i know. It is my job to see. I am BiNoc, The Eye. Like the third, I see what is not visible. The horizon extends out before me unknowable only until i glance upon it.

i am human; with supernatural vision, yes but human nonetheless. snatch out my heart and i shall expire. that is why they keep me prowling a penthouse not my own, protected, barricaded, by men and women also not my own. i am given everything i want except that which i want most: to forget the horizon and get vertical. to explore up and down instead of left and right. to feel concreted earth beneath my booted feet. i am so hungry i even want to feel the swell of oceans.

water, of any appellation, was something i avoided in my past life. i didn’t drink it. i showered in it daily and that was the extent of my interaction. dishes, clothes, anything requiring water’s cleansing properties was taken care of out of my presence.

only in my dreams did the fact that of the earth’s inhabitants, water constituted the majority become a reality. in my dreams, i was dolphin, shark, shrimp, plankton, dead bodies, even women walking dusty miles to collect water from the rivers or streams i occupied. in detroit, i was blocked from pouring out spouts and diverted to golf courts. in my dreams, i was political in a way i never was whén awake.

I Came, I Saw, I Conquered

I slice and dice lands
and create monetary demands
that leave you with no hands.
When I’m not slicing and dicing
I’m straight up enticing
you out of your rings and things.

I cut swaths through people’s villages
earning my wealth through pillages.
I got people on the run, on the move
and kings with strength to prove.
I expel and dump the unwanted
and those who remain undaunted
with the stipulation they remember
they’re undesirable, like my temper.

I am Europe at the end of hte 19th century.
I bring murder, mayhem and rape of your family tree.

I fight wars to make sure what’s mine stays mine
and to make what’s yours become mine.
I send foot soldiers, settlers, even your own kind
deeper into your territory to rob you blind.
All of my languages had a place in the sun:
French, Dutch, English and Belgian.

And now your languages have a foot in the grave
and none of your people know how to behave.
I get to scream loud about genocide
while still taking blood from your hide;
getting world opinion on my side
while your black ass gets fried.

Excerpted from my first book, In the Whirlwind

Open Letter to the People and Leaders of Iran from the People of the United States

Sign onto the letter at the bottom of this page

16681112616_f73431cb44_z_(1).jpgIt has come to our attention while observing the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the United States government that a group of 47 U.S. Senators are attempting, against the will of the majority of the American people, to sabotage any agreement due to their hope of creating additional conflict between our country and the people of Iran.

We would also like to bring to your attention that many people in the United States are aware that the United States government is in violation of a treaty approved by the Senate and signed into law. The treaty imposes an affirmative obligation on the United States and all other countries possessing nuclear weapons to act to diminish and eventually eliminate all of their existing nuclear weapons as a condition for relieving non-nuclear countries of the need to acquire such terrifying weapons. The official name of this treaty is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons or NPT.

We also wanted to bring to your attention that under the U.S. Constitution, (Article 6, Clause 2), any treaty approved by the Senate and signed into law “shall be the supreme law of the land” in the United States.

Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requires the United States as a nuclear power to: “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control”. (our emphasis)

We wanted to make sure that you were aware that the U.S. Constitution, recognizing the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as the supreme law of the land in the United States, requires government officials to carry out two specific tasks:

First, to eliminate the U.S. nuclear arsenal under its Treaty pledge of “general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control;”

And second, to “pursue negotiations in good faith” with other nations for the achievement of nuclear disarmament.

As things stand, the United States is in violation of this “supreme law of the land.”

The United States is not ridding itself of nuclear weapons. It possesses thousands of operational nuclear weapons that it is not destroying. In fact, it is in the process of improving their capability, deploying them on updated fighter aircraft, and other land-attack missiles, aircraft carriers and submarine platforms at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars in new government funding.

The United States also provides more than $4 billion in military and economic aid to the state of Israel although Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or allow outside inspectors, and does not deny that it possesses a considerable arsenal of nuclear weapons. We are not aware of any call by U.S. officials insisting that Israel sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or begin liquidating its own nuclear arsenal.

We, the people of the United States, are also aware that Iran as a signatory to the same Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has the absolute legal right, as do all signatory countries, to develop a nuclear capability for civilian energy purposes.

Article IV of the Treaty states: “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”

As a side note, we are also aware that when your country was ruled by a monarch installed in power in 1953 as a consequence of a CIA led-coup against the then constitutional government in Iran, the policy of the U.S. government was to encourage the development of an Iranian nuclear program.

We hope that this letter enriches your understanding that the spirit and content of the Open Letter by 47 Republican Senators does not conform with the views and desires of a broad section of public opinion inside the United States.

Their real aim in scuttling and sabotaging the current negotiations between the United States and Iran, perhaps unprecedented in the form they have chosen, is to create more conflict including the danger of military action against Iran.

Be assured that the last thing the American people want is war with or against Iran.

Initial signers

Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General • Cynthia McKinney, former Congresswoman • Brian Becker, ANSWER Coalition • Cindy Sheehan, peace activist • Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund • Heidi Boghosian, Esq., Constitutional Rights attorney • James Lafferty, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild Los Angeles • Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait • Chuck Kauffman, National Co-Coordinator of Alliance for Global Justice • Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst • Eugene Puryear, Party for Socialism and Liberation • Medea Benjamin, co-founder, Code Pink • David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org • Juan Jose Gutierrez, Vamos Unidos, USA • Malachy Kilbride, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance • Imam Mahdi Bray, American Muslim Alliance • Phil Wilayto, author and editor, Virginia Defenders Newspaper • Don DeBar, Host, CPR News • Arturo Garcia, Alliance Philippines • Radhika Miller, Attorney, Washington, D.C. • Rev. Claudia de la Cruz, Rebel Diaz Arts Collective (RDACBX) • Kim Ives, Haiti Liberte • Benjamin N. Dictor, Attorney, New York, NY • John Beacham, ANSWER Chicago • Phil Portluck, Voices4Justice72.com • Preston Wood, ANSWER – LA • Mike Prysner, March Forward! • Jeff Bigelow, labor organizer • Gloria La Riva, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five

thomas sankara on the emancipation of women

Reblogged for International Women’s Day

Tichaona Chinyelu's avatarTichaona Chinyelu

Our women must not pull back in the face of the many different aspects of their struggle, which leads them to courageously and proudly take full charge of their own lives and discover the happiness of being themselves, not the domesticated female of the male. Today, many women still seek the protective cover of a man as the safest way out from all al that oppresses them. They marry without love or joy, just to serve some boor, some dreary male who is far removed from real life and cut off from the struggles of the people.

Often, women will simultaneously demand some haughty independence and at the same time protection, or even worse, to be put under the colonial protectorate of a male. They do not believe that they can live otherwise. No. We must say again to our sisters that marriage, if it brings society nothing positive and…

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Sankara Mantra (7 months)

11 years ago today, I gave birth to the one, the only Sankara Kono. Mothering him is a topsy-turvy journey of joy. When he was 7 months old, I wrote the poem below for/about him.  As evident by the photo, his determination lives! Happy birthday, my love!

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Sankara Mantra (7 Months)

Lashes like mine.
Eyes like mine
even in the way
they peruse a room.

Skin like mine
but darker.
A bafflement inside me
every time I hear him
referred to as black.
(how’d you get such a black baby?)

It has happened twice
and so has my response:
(black is beautiful)

Sankara
whose birth filled the holes
consuming my heart

Sankara
who is entranced by his reflection
in the mirror
has begun to stand.

I am in awe of his determination
and the fact that
at barely seventeen pounds
his head is already past my knees.

Sankara
who I brought into an oppressive world
clutches his walker with his pudgy fingers
and walks completely around it.

I watch with a joy that is miraculous.

Sankara
who I brought into an oppressive world
is owed happiness and well-being
and that is a debt I will pay

like Malcolm said
by any means necessary.