Araminta Speaks

She is not so pretty...
Her face is gnarled and weathered 
Cracked and wizened and not so womanly
She sits there, though, a beautiful angel in white

I don't see it, but I know it's there -
A scar on her head from being beaten senselessly 
An ironic damage to her brain
That made her insanely dare to be free

She is pitch dark with piercing eyes
That mirror the consequence of Black servitude and White privilege
She has become the raft of Mahayana 
The Northern Star that walks the Earth

She is the mother we don't honor well
With trivial talk of paper currency
It behooves us to consider the vice versa - 
And say instead that Moses was the Jewish her

Because she is who led her devotees to nirvana 
To sit in the shade of Allah's throne
She is who fought her country's prurience with patriotism 
All for the audacity called freedom

And she will die 
But still not be done,
Reaching across the century 
Speaking to her children like me
Who have decided to stand and be free

I hear the dogs a-coming
But her voice is louder than theirs
Her whisper is a roar

And I can see her in white 
Through the trees...

...She still is not so pretty - yet -
She is the most beautiful of things
And what she whispers I will marry my heart to

Her roar  - it is just two (loud) words
That permanently reverberate through my ventricles:

Keep...
    Going...


 © Taj Ashaheed

Ammo

Ammo 

They always try to tell me...
What to do
Who and what I must..and must not be
Who I should deify and vilify
That I should walk with my back straight and lips clamped

But that's because they don't want me to be a panther 
But I was born with clenched fists...
Meant to hold a machete 
My jaws convert words into caliber...

And you cannot tell a bullet...
To be anything but a bullet
And you surely cannot negotiate with it not to ricochet

Lights Out

This prison bed has no give
This prison bed
Is like a poem written in a margin 

It is a marriage
Of metal, welded at an angle
Sometimes, it's a big ass slab
Of concrete, grey
The mattress with it's comfort like a coffin
Is a good place to hide a homemade knife

Something in a prison is never
About dreaming 
It's never about living
Or "being"

...It's all about storage

This prison bed
Is a rigid space

Like a shelf...

The Lesson

The Lesson

One day we'll laugh at this

But

Can you imagine

The abject horror the white folks felt

When they heard the Negro say

The most terrifying and dreadful thing: 

"By Jesus, we gon' send our kid to a good school...."

Dhikr (Remembrance)

I sat down in my cell 
and broke a cardinal rule
And got a tattoo of your name

I melted a plastic chess piece 
and collected the rising soot in a cup
And mixed it with 2 equal parts 
of shampoo and water

Then I took a staple and sharpened it to a point
And tied it to the end of a pencil
With string I pulled out of my blanket

I drew your name -
9 block letters, backwards 
Then, took some Speed stick 
and smeared it

On the inside of my forearm 
and pressed the slip of paper to my skin
Making a perfect fax

Then I took the needle, that used to be a staple
And picked...
And picked...
And picked...

Following the lines of my skin, 
stoic to the pain

And when I was done
There was your name, emblazoned

Now and forever, 
a reminder
Of my Holocaust