Fake: an ode to ISIS

They so fake,
Them lies they create
Chip away slowly at the things
We hold holy

Like O'Reilly and Hannity
Losing their sanity,
Lacking lucidity
On some FoxNews stupidity
Misreading the Quran and misquoting the Prophet

Trading the Deen for mayhem and profit

They so fake

Like foolish fatwas coming
From faulty shaikhs

Like those 40 thieves on 7 seas
Hijacking religion like a plane in the 70s

They so fake

Their ignorance and terror
Feeds this war on error
But, murder and discrimination
aint actually condoned in the religion
They forgot even the Prophet
Married a Jew and a Christian

They so fake.

Calling everybody else an infidel
But they're the ones acting like Jezebels
Show-n-tell show-offs with AKs and molotovs
These aint Believers
These are Deceivers and Underachievers

Yo, akhi, blowing yourself up
Doesn't make you a martyr
Those 72 wenches you're chasing
are Shaitan's daughters

They so fake.

Them and their pseudo-caliphate
They act real goonish
targeting insolent cartoonists -
Brothers and Sisters, let me make this real clear
That drawing aint Muhammad
It's just a stick figure with a beard

Not Muhammad...

And here's another secret
Jihad is not global, it's internal
And suicide's not noble
But it does lead to Hell
Hot and eternal

They so fake.

They making grave mistakes
Thinking there's no sin shooting little girls
Or selling heroin to the world

They so fake.

Don't let the wool fool you
That they pull over your eyes
Like turban of urban legend and lies
While real Muslims get vilified and villianized


They so fake.

And we're so horrified
And mystified and hypnotized
Giving way to much power
To certified cowards



But me
I'll love this religion to the day of my death
Hoping the shahada is on my very last breath
And I worship with brothas - hyenas and wolves
And we run in the same pack
And that day is coming real soon
When we snatch these lames by the neck
And take our religion back

StoneCutter (for my Sistas)

Like Pygmalion – who carved and shaped his love from stone

And wished it alive to love him back

I made you.

I Remember… when

I made you make the first hard decision

As a consequence of chasing golden empires and trying to touch Heaven with pyramids

When we had to seize power by seizing others –

And we sold them – and ourselves to them and to US

And, there was US stacked high and wide like warehouse products

Cushioned by screams and disease

In the dark...

And on the ship deck, weighing a future of plantations and ghetto fabulousness, you threw yourself and our children overboard

Rather be embraced by sharks than by sugar cane…

When after eons of oppression where I lost you-

Torn from my arms in East African slave ports and raped by a thousand Tom Jeffersons,

Left to be maids and factories for bodies to fill the cotton fields...

I continued to chip you out of stone, my chisel lubricated by tears whips and chains force me to cry

I created you and named you Isabel  and Araminta

And you were beaten and taken daily

Hewn out of granite by steel tools of hate

Until Cupid breathed life – and love into you

And so then you learned to name yourself –

Called yourself Sojourner and Harriet 

And you questioned if u were actually a woman and yet you led reluctant men to freedom,

Daring to kill anyone who turned back

But then I defined my newly found liberty by equating…

…Success by imitating…

…The people who could steal my own manhood and change my very name

So I took to Windsor knots and hair conks

Wanted my skin to look the hue of a brown paper bag and my hair like Clark Gable

And you?

You became typecast – Beulah and Jemimah

…and Mammy after Mammy

So I embraced dejection and anger and rejection

And I…became a pimp, player – and a hustler

My new name became Dolemite and Pootie Tang

And you became Cleopatra and Foxy

Tricking and tricked by Mister Charlie - 

Til you shot him of course with a gun pulled out of your afro

Yeah, but it was all bell-bottomed bullshit that had to be redeemed

By Angela/Assata/Maya

Oh, and Shirley, who ran for president long before the brothas did.

But damn she was ugly –

But they were all “ugly” – strong, angry and scowling back at all us brothas…

So... I had to smash that image,

Fill back in what I had etched out

So I gave it hips like Pam

calves like Tina

a voice like Eartha

Moves like Josephine 

Thighs like Mary J Blige

Later for that movement shit-

Gimme those thick black hips

Fuck that burnt bra and upraised fist

My chisel creates glistening sensual full black lips

No more afros, locks and twists

Drop a few bucks now on Indian weaves and 

Fake asses sewn into jeans

Before you know it I’m not a father any more –

I gotta settle for “Baby Daddy” cuz I got convinced

that a quest card is my adequate replacement

Here: hug on this block of govt cheese, Sister

Let it melt and keep you warm at night

While I’m away in prison with a million of my brothers

It’s okay, our kids will play ball for money

Or become rap stars

And eventually buy you houses

And you can star in their videos

And make your own money

Writing books on what celebrity you fucked

Stay in shape though – make that ass clap and

Drop it down low

Right down there with your credit score

My image has finally come to life

but me and it aint close no more

Our embrace is a formality 

cuz you can’t stand to let me go

And I have no idea how to stay

And the platinum and black diamonds 

are more important than your black arms around my neck

We don’t even make love

Because we haven’t even manufactured respect

I can’t touch your weave

And risk messin up your tracks

And you can’t risk scratching my back –

Cuz your nails might pop off

I am mad at the realization that
Nothing belongs to me so I don’t want you

And for some reason, you love me

And I want to hate you

But I can’t stop loving you back

I want to kiss you forever – and strangle you at the same time

I’m not really an artist am I?
I am a contradiction -

A sculptor with a blunt chisel and broken hammer

I’m a villain

A mad scientist

I’ve created you, a monster

You burnt my village and ran off with BET

You are a testament to my flawed plan:

I made you – and you turned out to be a cold and hard reflection of the sculptor himself

I made you…All without knowing what I myself am made of ..

I made you, and in so doing, all I ended up doing was unmaking myself

copright 2009, 2019 - Taj Ashaheed

Video: Cast, a ballad...

Cast, A Ballad

I do this for the ghosts,
That swim the Middle Passage ocean floor
For the backs stiffened by scars borne
As the consequence of plantation whippings

For fingers blunted and blistered
By cotton pickin' below Mason Dixon
For the echo of fractured families,
And forgotten surnames

I do this for the missing 2/5ths
Of constitutional existence
For assassinated adolescents
Forgotten in Baptist basements

For those martyred activists
Whose names sounded like a law firm
And for voices coming from poplar trees
Whispering, "won't you ever remember me?"

For the smoked out Colfax, Louisiana courthouse
And the tear-stains in the middle
Of the Evers' family driveway

For obstinate organizers and
Long summer bus rides
For the swollen ankles of ancestors
That marched over the bridges of bigots

Past snarling dogs and rigid water hoses
Past all the obstacles orchestrated by
James Crow:
Reading tests and burning crosses,
Meant to stymy freedom's flow

I do this for 1000 cities called "Ferguson",
Where complacency and shoulder shrugs
Have been an invitation to racial subjugation

And for mothers and fathers trading their lives
to save sons and daughters,
Who, in the face of AK47s, don't blink
Who point their way to a new history
With fingers dipped in blue ink

For so many reasons found in between
Heaven and Earth below
I duck into the booth
And pull the curtain closed,

Courting claustrophobia
Alone - but standing on the shoulders
Of unknown unappreciated uncelebrated souls

I put X's in boxes with hands that are not just mine
And I swear I hear the poplar trees whisper
That I'm doing "just fine"
As I cast into the winds of the future
My wish for absolution, revolution, and Hope

Because I can...
Because they couldn't...
Because they tried to break them...
Because they just wouldn't...

 

So, at every chance...
I VOTE.

i asked this teacher a question...

I asked this teacher a question

She told me “I don’t know”
And her answer cuts me deep
Like a mineshaft sunk too deep into the earth

Stripping it bare
Leaving a scar you can see from the atmosphere

I mean, she was a teacher...

The fountain of answers to the mysteries of the world
My personal statue of liberty lighting the way out of ignorance
My Harriet Tubman, who defiantly, desperately leads to knowledge even among the din of protest and fear

This teacher I’ve known all my life
From the old school – raised in the chocolate land of Virginia
Where secrets run deep like the south that it is
Secrets that are blacker than the skin of its inhabitants

And from there rose this giant ofwoman – all of 4 foot 11

Not a product of the environment but like a diamond pried
From the mines,
Said, "I’m gonna be a teacher" and did it
As a Clark Atlanta HBCU graduate
And took all she had and all she gained
And gave it back – time and time again

To the children.

See, to her they too were diamonds
To be cut and shaped and faceted
To shine – to be BRILLIANT

Couldn’t have kids of her own but
Kept the mantle of motherhood firmly around her shoulders
And in time took in 5 children who used to belong to someone else

She was a mother a teacher
A teacher - a mother
And at times the lines
Were often blurred - for, she taught her children
And mothered her students

She wielded epiphanies and ah-ha’s like weapons

And turned-on light bulbs for multitudes
Like Jesus with extra fish

She was an emancipated blacksmith who gave away keys to
Break out of shackles and handcuffs

 Her love was homemade pineapple ice cream for the whole class after her worst student Aced an exam

Her discipline was making her oldest son transcribe the dictionary at 9 years old for shoplifting candy bars

She planted the seed by making my class read
Encyclopedia Brown when the other class was struggling with Dick and Jane

She taught us why Indians aint Indian and how
Columbus sailed with faulty compass and
While we celebrate his blunder
A whole people went missing via genocide and ethnocentric plunder

She read us Langston Hughes and ee cummings
She ran us thru literary gauntlets with Pippi Longstocking and Frederick Douglass

Taught us spelling and spelling and more spelling and conjugation and more conjugation
How to keep decimals in line and using reciprocals in fraction multiplication

At recess she would play with the kids and I remember every time we played dodgeball she would be last one left 

She could move so fast and nimble

Nobody I mean nobody seemed to be able to hit her out –

This teacher polished every child that she taught, made them brilliant,

Shiny and
Faceted

And they twinkled and rose in value in every setting they settled into a future

This teacher, She had all the answers

Except for one
To the question I asked her,
She said, “I don’t know”

I was blind-sided – I knew no one was perfect
But there's exception to every rule, right?
A part of me died, killed – no, murdered- by that “I don’t know”

I was her bad student at times
Never late but always delinquent
Always-fighting-in-class
Who’d talk back, and get smacked and still talk back 
I was surely ultimately, disappointing to her

And the question I asked,
That solicited that soul rendering, soul destroying, “I don’t know”?
I asked it-

After a particularly troublesome day
Where, for some now unremembered reason
We sat in s child and parent confrontation

See, this teacher was my mother
And I, her adopted and oldest son
The one who had to copy that dictionary
Fingers cramping for 11 days straight

And the teacher – my mother – my teacher- said “I don’t know”
A soul shattering admission of ignorance-

When all I did was ask her:

“Do you love me?”