This Love: A Poem

This Love is larger than

And is ever more,

Than what of Love
We can ever know...

This Love is worth so much more 

Than what we can ever give

This Love, with the surface tension of the softest water

And the gravity of a thousand Suns

Is the Love of something Perfect

Is the Love of something real

It is the Love for wonderful things
And for things created so full of wonder

This is the Love for favors
And blessings given so freely

This Love is for the things found to be beautiful

And for when He covered up our so-evident ugliness

This Love is for shelter from calamitous weather

And for the forgiveness we get
That we never deserve

Or beg Him loud enough for...

This is a Love that declares loudly our accolades

To angels in each of the 7 heavens above

This Love loves with no requirement,
No grading and no demerit

This Love is nothing we can imagine
A Love hidden inside of everything we can

We can find it encased in scars
And trapped in the amber of tears

Inside of tornadoes and earthquakes

And threaded through every headache and heartbreak

Through prison bars and even in graveyards,
This Love can still be discovered

This Love... like the enigma of Stonehenge

And the kaleidoscope of chameleons,

This Love for sunsets and back rubs

For the pride of fathers

And for needing my mother’s hugs

For deep space and the ocean blue

For the color of every uttered  “I Love you”

This Love is bigger than we can ever be,
Yet it carves out a silhouette

Waiting for you and me
To simply fit ourselves into

This Love is vast, with open arms around us

Bliss that forever grows
In gardens that greenly surround us

Flowing in Rivers that run deep
Underneath and around us

Just waiting for us to rush through,
And back into,

Our place...

Our place home in this LOVE

Thank You, Little White Girl

Thank you, Little White Girl

Sitting there with pig-tails

On your little red tricycle

"Hi, Nigger!"

Waving at me walking by on a Wednesday

Ripping at the ambling daydream

Of my stroll home from after school

My shell-toes are scuff-free

My Kangol hat is cocked ever so cool

In the deep suburbs Where I live at

I am an anomaly - a novelty

My rarity is my celebrity

Cuz, I know all the "cool songs"

I got girlfriends (plural) and

None of them are my color

And a couple of their mothers

Want to get to know me in private

My style is Xeroxed and xenofied

And I don't pay much mind

To the cops that stop me on my own Block

Flashing their lights at me

Like paparazzi 

Always asking me

"Do you live around here?" (boy)?"

Man, I was so naive

But not no more

Thanks to you, Little White Girl...

You and your sing-song salutation

Fluttering thru the tassels 

Of the handle bars of your little red tricycle:

When you smiled real big, waving at me

"Hi Nigger...!", you said...

I didn't hear it at first...

And you must've seen it float away un-noticed

So, you repeated it:
Louder, waving more urgently

"Hi Nigger! HI NIGGER!!"

THIS time it reaches me

BOLD and italicized

You wonder why I don't reply

Ah, but your little blue eyes are too small

To see the lance pierced into my side
To see me looking like a sacrificed Nazerite 

Your pale ears are way too small to hear 
the mirror of cultural assumptions 
shatter right in front of me

But what can I do but, keep walking...?

Pretending I don't feel the pain
While cutting the soles of my feet on the shards of incredulity

I can't really blame you for the lynchings
Or the missed job opportunities

I can't expect you to stop

The police from pulling me over for no reason

Or shooting me for less than that...

See...
I know it's your parents fault 

Even though your mama watches me walk by everyday too
Wondering if all the myths are true
Thinking about getting that spade tattoo 

But I  just... keep walking, 
Ambling into my daydream, oblivious to my own suffering

Leaving you still sitting here 

On a little red tricycle

Still waving at me walking by

On a Wednesday

My face slowing drying into the mask 

That all my people wear

Sitting Hard and bitter on our faces
Sealing up our lips and our souls,

It wont even let me reply...

Mama Told Me Not To Fall In Love With A Poet (National Poetry Day offering)

Mama told me not to fall in love with a poet.

Because, a poet cannot love you back.

She told me, next time you see her draw her close and listen for a heartbeat.

All you hear is the cacophony of quills dipping and drowning in ink.

Son, you cannot hope to compete with the fact that

Poets are betrothed only to rhythmic prose
Hearts forever buried like vampyric souls.

Destined to a martyr's end, prophesied by the scratches of 1000 pens,

Writing and reciting their souls into rolled up pages, microphones and bloody stages;

The love of a poet: dear son, is ethereal like incense -
bound up too tightly in head wraps, leather journals and fingers snaps.

A poet is Van Gogh reborn - maniacally painting the discourse of pathos

-and you My Dear are no more than a castrated ear.

A poet is Salome: Her dance is to your death, and not even Jesus can save you...

A poet is Delilah: you think it safe in her arms while your head is being shorn

A poet is Medusa: whose pretty words issue from the mouths of snakes in poisonous rhymes

 leaving ears and eyes stoned and mesmerized

Son, if you want to know what love of a poet looks like: 

Look at the way a dyslexic with autism writes.

A poet will feed on your love like a leech and bleed you out thru her fingers into pools of cardinal ink,

Writing your secrets out for the world to read in skin-bound volumes.

Now, I listened intent to my mother's dissuasion

but of course stubborn sons hardly take heed to what their mamas say -

And so, I went and fell in love with a poet anyway.

And was soon struck dead just like the oracle said

She stung me like the scorpion does the frog

Burned me in the same way that lava did to Pompeii

And when I finally rose,

A phoenix with ashes falling off of my shoulders

I heard again clearly the voices of my mother asking me

Now dear son will you not finally see?

A poet does not and cannot be held by hearts or by hands

They are too busy trying to capture the rhythm that mountains and trees already dance to

All they know is psychosis and loneliness which puts a ring on their finger and the choker around their neck

Desperate to learn but never getting to speak the language of birds

So Dear son, promise me again, to never fall in love with a poet but

Instead, fall in love with the words

But mother, I protested -
How can you relegate me to a ronin, husbanded to solitude?

How am I to follow this cautionary advice coming from you?

You've cursed me and left me with nothing about love to do-

How is it that you fail to forget-

Your son..

Is a poet too?

Dear R Kelly

Dear R(obert) Kelly:

I don’t know if I can blame you solely

Like, you remind me of some things  Found in old histories,

Like, you remind me of the citizens of Gomorrah and Sodom

Whhich means collectively, we are a lot like Lot,

Offering you our daughters without a second thought,

Like Mayans sacrificing virgins to keep the rain at bay

Yet you would pour out your amber rays right in our children’s faces,

Their faces upturned offerings we trade for a ballad or a soundtrack anthem

I believe you think you can fly

How else do you hold yourself above us all like so?

So high in your kingdom of impunity

But Robert -  you are not alone just a just another name on the company roster of faulty fuck boi incorporated

Right there with Cosby, Mike Vick, Cam, Tiger, Kendu, All the niggas who fucked Nikki Minaj, all the niggas in every iteration of black ink and love and  hip hop.

Dear Robert – your story ain't really new,

You’ve been the real life Candyman of Chiraq for years, at

Kenwood Academy, your reserved parking spot is near the cafeteria

fuckboy" is a badge worn by plenty of scouts before you...

You got/you got/you got betrayal all up in your DNA,

You and John Tubman, must share the same ancestry tree,

He wanted to snitch on his wife Harriet before she got her some free

And, imagine what Coretta Scott thought 

When she heard the tape of Martin 

Fucking somebody that wasnt her

Robert, you remind me of the dichotomy -

Of Nate Parker gangbanging drunk white girls in his dorm room

Yet assuming to direct a film like Birth of a Nation to teach me  about history..?

And don’t even get me started on Nat Turner…Because even as a revolutionary that nigga was a

Coward and a charlatan

But Robert, we are so scared of harsh words and drawn lines

That we let you skate by 

And sing to us lie after lie

Your lyrics are truth, tho

They done told us what you wanted to do

"Age aint nothing but a number"

And that you  dont see nothin wrong in the world

With having sex with a little girl

I get it…you want to be young

But that’s not the holy grail you want to hold on your tongue

You cannot hear the cries of anger and anguish from the fathers

They are silent because they are absent.

They must be ones you led away with your instrumental 12 play

Never to be seen again 

Like the children of Hamlin in that Pied Piper Story

Because no real man could ever be bought off

Could never really offer his daughter 

On a silver plater to a pedophile on a silver platter like Judas did his homie 

Or could they..?

Perhaps our little girls remind us of the humanity

That has been stolen from and denied us

And giving our child to you is our apotropaic dance

As we chase a sense of self that lies drowning just off the Slave coast

But Today we need a new paradigm

Dear Robert I don’t know if I blame you solely

Some of that

All of that 

Is our responsibility

One of us need to break down your harem door

Give your parking space back to an underpaid teacher

I hate that you make music so good

Like an actual pied piper

No

It’s time to break your pipe, unplug your mic

You’ve sold out the revolution for the crack high of your ego and you penis

And it’s time to leave you broken 

And split open, belly spilled out in an alley

Like Judas...

Like Huey...

Dear Robert,

I believe you really think you can fly 

But I don't see nothin wrong with tossing you off 

The roof of a daycare center

To test your musical theory

How do you hold yourself above us all  like so?

High in your kingdom of impunity

Our daughters are worth more than a million dollars of herpes hush money,

Our daughters are worth more than our absence and complacency,

Our daughters are not your piano keys,

If any of them were my daughter this poem would be your eulogy

I hope the father of the girl you peed on makes this poem your eulogy

Dear Robert, 

I believe you really do think you can fly

But nigga you're just  Lucifer needing to be brought low

A fire should be set in your studio

Break your pipe, unplug your mic

We should shackle you like that Babylon  whore

So that your song is finally stifled, 

And you can steal our kids no more...

Brother Taj performs "U(s): a poem" at the Kasbah

(US)...

We've become hopeless and souless

Cuz they stole us

And sold us

For sugar, rum, and gold dust

Stacked into slave ships

Packed in like tins of small fish

To be smacked into the Plymouth Rock,

And the culture shock of auction blocks

where we were sold and bought 

like bonds and stocks 

They displaced us; disgraced us 

Raped and debased us 

They took everything from us

They took away Prosser, Vesey and Turner

Replaced it with sambos, mammies 

Amos and andies,

They took away our history 

And replaced it with a hyphenated ethnicity

They took everything from us

And then they gave us free...

 ...And then they gave us crack -

And now we're too broke to ever give that back.

Now, I got jewels and money stacks 

And I got them things that boom and clap

So went to prison got a GED

Got on parole and on EBT

Now they Stop me and now they Frisk me 

and sudden movements are way too risky

Because the police shoot to kill us 

And then the city bills us 

They take everything from us

They do give us toe drags and body bags and activism hashtags

They take away education and give us incarceration 

And racially biased adjudication

They take everything from us 

They use the school to prison pipeline to gentrify the Eastside

To steal away our sunshine

They use our own kind and white lies

to prosecute Black lives

they take everything from us

They took away the cool #7 Kaepernick

and give us a coon #7: Michael Vick

They take everything from us

And They still take us and they mace us

Tackle us and taze us

 billy club and break us

 And they Trumped us because they hate us

They rather replace us than relate to or equate to us 

They're taking everything from us 

And now we are a people broken and ripped wide open 

turned into Aunt Jemimas, Uncle Tom's and Candace Owens

And they still reject us and disrespect us

suspect us and arrest us

they're taking everything from us

They're taking everything from us 

They're taking everything from us 

They're taking everything from us 

not even leaving us...US

An Ode To My Big Wheel...

We all have dark days..

But nothing compares to the spiritual death that I felt,

That day when my father

Ran over my Big Wheel...

You cannot understand how  the sound of plastic scrunching under a 2 ton vehicle tears into the soul of a 4 year old...

Now this was back in 1974

And I was in love with that vehicle,

It was red, blue, and yellow

With the tassels comin' out the handle

With the hand brake that if you pulled just right, you could do a cool-ass skid

Like that kid did in the commercial,

See, those were the days now call "back-in-the-day"

Days we reminisce over – wishing they never went away

The average yearly income was 14 thousand 
And a gallon of gas was only 55 cents.

That same year,, 55 became the nation’s speed limit

Those days, we played outside gone all day,

Long before white  vans, gangs and ricochets,

Took all the fun away…

Now, granted- real stuff was going on,

We had Watergate, Nixon, the OPEC crises...

And high ass gas prices-

That had Mama  driving clear across town 

To wait in long ass lines

But us kids were oblivious

Because those were the days of Saturday morning cartoons, like

•Hong Kong Phooey

•Fat Albert and the gang

•Super friends- before they added those wonder twins

•Land of the Lost (not that BS remake)

•Scooby Doo

•The Jetsons

•Pink Panther

Thundarr  the Barbarian - with Scmoo

•Speed Buggy

°Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes

And don’t forget:

The Electric Company

And School House Rock

WE still remember joints like: "I'm Just a Bill (sitting here on Capitol Hill) and,

Conjunction junction…(What's your Function?)

Yeah...

And at night 

When we could stay up late,

We'd watch Isis, Shazam  

Wonder Woman, and the

Six Million Dollar Man

And the next day,

We’d pretend we were bionic, running and jumping in slow motion

These were the days before virtual reality became sorta real –

When Atari came out with it’s first game, Pong...

Remember?

It was just 2 lines and a square and we all thought those graphics were the future

Those days, we lived outside...

And we would ride...

We’d grab our parent’s disco jackets and hop on our big wheels

Rolling out like Easy Rider... 

And We would pedal and pedal and pedal and pedal ...

Because Big wheels ran on pure people power 

And I’d try to hit the brake to wipe out

BUT I NEVER COULD SKID LIKE THAT KID ON TV

I would pull on the brake and just...

Stop.

And one day – in my haste to run inside to get a some Tang...

I parked my big wheel behind my Dad's car

Trying to keep my ride in the shade

And for whatever reason Allah decided to squash my heart in his Hands, inspiring  my Pops to run some insignificant errand – and

My hopes and dreams were soon dismantled as my big wheel lay mangled,

Torn and Broken.

Destroyed Beyond repair...

And I never did get a replacement,

And soon I graduated

To a Huffy...

But over the years, I could still feel the taste of that loss in the back of my throat

And when I grew up and got kids and bills

I bought myself a 1974 Plymouth Duster...

I named her Roberta,

She was all muscle and metal, rough around the edges
Fast and loud as hell

I named her Roberta
and she would always set of all the car alarms when I drove thru parking garages

And with the same frustration of that big wheel-

I couldn't ever manage to peel out or make my tires squeel...

But one day -

As I was speeding down 26th Avenue between Colorado and York 

Back when it was  a quarter mile straightaway,  so i was ZOOMING

And I came to the intersection way too fast

And saw a bus coming down York ..

Slammed on my breaks to avoid the collision course...

And skidded into a 360 degree circle 

And when I

Stopped...

. ...I sat at the intersection perfectly.

The passengers on the bus clapped and cheered  as they drove by

And I sat there scared to death – heart thumping in my chest
We

Then, suddenly, the memory of my childhood tragedy came back to me in a flood 
And I began to beat my dashboard with glee

You see, I was finally free...

I could finally heal from losing my big wheel:

Because I FINALLY DID THAT MUTH-*%$#@-ing SKID -

AND IT WAS WAY BETTER THAN WHAT THAT KID DID ON TV!!!!!!

Welcome to the New Reservation

Welcome to the New Reservation
Where Palestinian is synonym
To American Indian
Where Gaza is a steri-strip
Slapped on a bullet wound

Where mortar shells smack-smack into bricks
And the people don't fit
Where the kettle is bound to boil over real soon

Where freedom is dying like buffalo in silence
While the future lives victim to the addiction of violence

Just how do you live in a city where you have to sell
The broken parts of your neighborhood
That have been repeatedly shelled
Bombed out and torn down
Where the word "building" is always a verb and never a noun...

Where schools and masjids are smoldering has-beens
Where the cityscape is scorched out stubble
And people buy food to eat by selling back the rubble?


Over here, the natives are given poker chips and beer
In Al Ghazzah, they only have rocks, slingshots
And their mothers' tears

Stuck like Old Testament Hebrews
In between Egypt and the Sea
Bricks mortered by the concrete of despair and misery

Neither neighbors nor the water provides any relief
Sabra and Shatilla are today's  Wounded Knee and Sand Creek, 

If we consult the past to see the future unfold
Then we aalready know Pandora's box holds very little hope

Life in the Strip stays is a sad ballad
Of tear gas canisters and full metal jackets,
Suicide runs, heavy retaliation, and
Adolescent martydom

Where Sons are taught to die young
Because War is the only thing left for them
to live for

They want jobs but not an occupation,

 Not looking for casinos or bucktooth  logos
In trade for their assimilation

So they try to sleep the sleep of giants
To dream the dreams of Philistines
Every fingertip is a wick, lighting
Hookah pipes and dynamite

The people pray for rain daily
To wash away the pain but
The only moisture they get comes from the
Rivers of sorrow

The same bitter water drank by Geronimo that made him become immortal

Do we remember the lessons that the Old Books taught?
Do they remember the ancient Gaza that Samson walked?

Do they see his hands pushing and pushing on the pillars, 
Because the reservation is rapidly running  out of room?

They are pushing and praying
Praying and pushing
While the people are dancing in the pavilion, oblivious and blind

They don't see the pushing
They don't hear the praying

No they're still dancing in the pavilion, oblivious and blind... 
They don't see the hair on Samson's head that's starting to grow back... 

So They don't hear the roof above them that's starting to crack...

The Throne of Weapons

In Africa, there is a Kester chair
A throne of sorts by design
To most men it is a seat unkind

Hand-crafted for unkingly royalty
Not to be sat on ordinarily

In Africa there sits this chair
Its back, arms, and legs explain
How we see ourselves easily sitting there
A metaphor, this chair -
It underscores the maxim
That when war is over
Rule is always unwisely wielded
By retired soldiers

The legs of this chair
Are barrels that are heat-warped
The arms are G3s
Made by the Portuguese
A recollection of hidden smiling faces -

And of when the dust of the African scramble
Settled.
And Mozambique became
Broken-
Free.

And had to fight itself
And eat its own parents
Leaving behind orphans
Learning to shoot guns
Taller than they were

And now the winds carry loudly
The cries and hearts' clamor
Of the slain and maimed
By monsters that still live in shadows

So here sits their monument
Smelling sharply of polished
Wood grain and machine oil
Gleaming in gun-black muted silence
The coiled quiet of violence
Of swords wielded into repurpose

Here sits a metallic mashup of a mindset
Finally being over-throne
So that maybe now, its unsettled past
Can recline into a future
That its children might one day want to own

Dunya...(For Sister Yasmeen)

The Ground is put where it's supposed to be

The dirt is always under your feet

It holds stubbornly to what wants to be free

It can drown you in waves and make you enslaved

The Ground will hide you in the folds of partitions

woven with desire and contrition

But the ground, it is not you cradle, nor your stable

So grasp surely your hammer and whetstone

Your soul is to be forged and honed,

Loosen the ties of your boots and

Do not let your toes turn into roots

Rise up to the air

Live and love on adamant wings

Rise up to the air

Open your heart and breathe

An Answer for Langston

Langston, let me tell you
What happens,

When It bears a weight
That It cannot take,

Of beaten kings,
and broken wings.

It rails,
And it roils,
Like thunderstorms and dragon's coils.

It goes to ground
But doesn't tire,

It just loads another round,

And prepares to fire...

Spoon... (mushy love poem)

At night -
When it is most Still
In that Space
Between asleep and awake
After a day of orbiting
Around and away from each other

We are finally brought to conjunction
Pulled together by a force
That even gravity envies

So I draw her in to me
Her back nestles to my chest,
I wrap her in my arms
And breathe into her neck

As Our legs entwine
Like oak trees and mistletoe vines
While in the twilight of a worn out day
Just before a new one
Bursts forth bearing a bright Dawn -
I feel myself drifting
Freely...

To the music of our mingled heartbeats

And I smile to myself from the
Middle of my soul,
For having found Love
In the middle of Darkness

When before I had searched so hard for
But could never really find
Even in the Light of Day...




© Taj Ashaheed 8/4/2013  &  3/21/2017