Oh, Kwanza

Back when the Bantu and Arabs had a linguistic marriage
and had a baby named Swahili
When I learned about the First Fruits and Ngozu Saba
The names were pretty familiar

We say that we were kings and queens

But somebody has to be the subject,
Somebody has the be ruled
Starved and whipped

And left behind in the hood

while we pursue being boughie living next to Chad and Karen

Somebody had to drag the blocks that built Giza and Timbuktu

Go and ask the bones...

That tell the story of Yoruba and Ashanti

Tribes we’ve reclaimed out of new Black Pride
With convenient amnesia – blotting out their Uncle Tom history:

Of selling their own kind 

To pale invaders and flesh traders

Mandinka and Masai were
Weighed down with manacles that severed our connection to Motherland

So Nat Turner died a death we never fully mourned
Or even known by the people he wanted to save

We blink more now 

Than we did back then
At black bodies swinging from trees
‘cuz back then these strung up bodies looked exactly like our newly adopted God hanging from the cross

So we quickly thought our lot in life

Was to also end up hanging in sacrifice...

In the new millennium,
We reject the whips and plantations and cotton gins
But we still hold on to chicken feet and beaks and cracklins

We finally got our holiday to celebrate a King's life
Never mind his plagiarism or the STD he brought to his wife

So now it makes sense that someone would make up a story that I have a dream speech was paid for by a rapist named Cosby

And Malcolm was also right – 

He saw the hypocrisy of his leader Elijah having babies with his teenaged secretaries

He saw hoe hating led to handshakes with neo-Nazis

And he knew he would fulfill the prophecy that Biggie said:

That The one really ever remembers you

Until somebody blows off your head

But the only thing that remains is Knowledge and God

Long after …
We blow the dust off of Public Enemy tapes

And faded Africa medallions nestled in the closet with our Kente cloth scarves

That we only take down at Kwanza

Weigght, Somebody please tell me: Just what the hell is Kwanza?
That Champion Apparel rebrand of a Black Holiday...?
Christmas in Black Face...?
Where we celebrate the corn that Actually came from Mexico
But Both the face ofJesus'  and his birthday are made up
And the real Saint Nick looked more like Firstly

Than that fat white dude at the mall
So I guess it must be okay to make up our own celebration
Like Rachel Dolezal makes up her melanation

And it must be okay that the father of Kwanzaa's tortured 2 sistas
Because "American criminal" is  sim[ply a redundant term of of 2 synonyms
But every year after The seven principles like umoja, and imani
I think of an 8th word You never ever hear about: uwaji-bikaji

Bettter known as accountability

Long after our history gets lost
And compacted into the shortest month of the year

Long after our memory of Tupac finally accepts
That that nigga is truly dead
Murdered by our unreasonable expectations
So, Brenda:
Remember to keep your head up
And we'll forget why we  STILL call you "bitch"
Long after we finally see Willie Lynch’s letter
For the insult to our intelligence that it really is:

Long after...
We  will still pour out libations to those who came before us
And when we do -

We should include the names Deborah Jones and Gail Davis
Who were whipped, water tortured and burned by soldering irons
By the founder of our holiday

As we light the candles of kinara
We should remember that the power structure of our nation Is not something worthy to imitate

And it'll be okay to hold Karenga accountable
We can root for everyone Black and sit him at the little kids table
In a seat next to Clarence, Kanye, Candace, , Stephen A, and Flava Flav

So run, Little brother and/sister listener
Run over to your kwanza tree
Pull out from under it that R Kelly CD
And your Zulu Nation sweatshirt
Dip it into gasoline
And Set it all on fire

And dance and sing and riot your way to  the freedom...

that will only be  born when contradiction dies
The death of fake pride
Etched in full in pages like Roots with its self-admitted lies

The only thing that remains is Knowledge and God

Go ask Mansa Musa…Mali king and the richest man in history

only like two things behind in his city oof Timbuktu

A mosque…
And a school…

The only thing left is knowledge and God

And the only thing greater than yourself -
Is the Truth
And we have run so far from it-
only to travelin a big ass circle, so that
Truth is now the only place we have left to run to

7/16

12/17/20

First, I Ask Permission... (for Nikki Giovanni)

Dear Nikki

The Devil is really mad at me

She wants me to be sullen and silent
But I have a CTE brain injury
That has given me drapetomania

I have the same brain damage that plagued my hero Harriet
A pathological audacity to think I am free

An accident, like the discovery of lasik

That has given me the clarity of spectrums 
Not too many people normally see

So I will stand up even if it means I might be taken down

When they ask me why I'm bound in shackles

I will ask them, why are you still free?

Because I cannot stand to be liberated if you cannot just be

I will not go quietly – into that good night or bad day

I will fling my poems at shuttered windows

That will shatter and let air in so we can all breathe

With your permission, Ms Giovanni

I am going to sharpen this piece of metal

And wrap the dull end with a piece of torn bed sheet

Like inmates do in every prison

And I am going to stab my nigger in the neck

And let the blood spurt

And run all over my hands so that
The copper-red slickness

Makes my hands slippery enough to slide off these shackles...

I finally got my diploma, Professor

From that HBCU called Hard Knock University

So I am more than qualified and motivated to run the revolution

Because we most certainly are due a new exodus

That will leave these neo plantations

Barren and silent

Leaving  DAs and COs scratching their heads

Wondering why their slave auction blocks are so empty

And their plea bargains unsigned un-ratified

You made it okay, Professor

To say things twice

To acknowledge the power of rap and H Brown

You made it okay the question Bible-thumpers believing in dragons

But not believing that we belong in their neighborhoods
or that we could even read good

I assure you Professor

That Aquarius is not dead

And that Atlantis has always been in Nigeria

So says the oracle of the Ife head

You taught me that the only way to cure

A narcissist is to spit squarely into their face

So I've been chewing on brutal honesty

Turning my saliva into cobra venom

That I dip the end of pens in

That I shoot like arrows thru a compound bow called spoken word micophones

No, I will not police my tone

I'm going to let it riot and set fires and give it no curfew

I'ma be like Emmett Till's mama,

I will not hide my scars

I will not give love and acceptance

To fire hoses, dog bites, or dynamite

Nor be the forgiver of snitches

Or the ignorer of former counter intel pro informers
Fred Hampton will live forever in my finger of accusation

Dear Professor I've made it further
Than the myth of lowered expectations
I made it
Past the age of 21
And now when the police come
I don't feel like i have to run
I have always had a v.o.i.c.e.

I just had to steal it back from where they hid it
I got a felony and I still vote
I spit poems i myself wrote
in the margins of racist supreme court decisions
beside my prison record footnotes

I am the most dangerous and glorious thing on the planet
I read, write and own books
I speak, spell and sleep real well
I am the harbinger of the new day

I am the panther and the mongoose

Who will bite the heads off of every snake on Medusa’s head

Leaving a trail of locks telling dreadful tales of sorrow and split ends
But I won't take it - or her - back

But i know
As scarred as I am, I can still love
There are still tears to be wiped and
Lips to be kissed 
There are still Hands to hold
Histories to be rewritten
Lies to be untold

So Dearest Professor Giovanni:

I have heard your call and eaten in the circle

That sits attentively at your feet

You asked me if I could kill a nigger -

That one that lives in the mirror,

And learn to finally be a man

So, I stand before you with my own blood 
On my now free hands

More than ready to be the happy mortar

That bricks have been dying to meet...

But before I began to build

First I ask your permission:

Dearest, Professor: May I be allowed to speak?

Whuppings - With A U

 Every now and then I catch myself waxing too nostalgic about whuppings

With emphasis on the vowel sound

To make it sound different than "whippings" 

So as not to equate parents with plantation owners

But I remember how my parents would beat me like a slave who didn't pick enough cotton

Recalling none-too-fondly the slash 

and the whistle of tree branches cutting thru the air

And the slapping thunder as leather connects with buttocks,  hips and back

As a child I learned I was  praying to an unresponsive god

Who rejected all my burnt offerings

Answering my supplications  with white hot pain

Id say my disrespect of authority figures started with my parents...

And their asinine arguments of:

“this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you”

Or:

"Shut up before I really give you something to cry about"

When Allah asks me to explain my brief stint as an atheist

I will point out the criss-cross pattern of belt-burns

That I carry that look like little crucifixions 

And I’ll mention to Him that I naturally only thought 

the same thing Jesus did in the bible about being forsaken...

I also learned how to strategize whenever 

mama sadistically made me go outside 

and pick my own switch of off a willow tree..

Now -I learned that you cannot just pick a totally dry, brittle branch...

So I employed the same process we now use to manufacture airplane parts -

picking one that only looked like it would last..

I swear white people are jealous for no reason - we really only dance better 

because we were taught early on by the sting of belts, 

And shoes, extension cords,  and Hot Wheels tracks...

...Into jumping up and down with both speed and rhythm 

like Watusi warriors doing the two step

I learned how to do the Dougie, stanky leg and cabbage patch - 

Long before BET became everybody's instructor,

I learned to contort and maneuver my body to make sure the end of momma’s belt

Did not make contact in the same spot twice 

In hindsight, if I only wrote down how hard I begged mama not to hit me again

Into a song addressed instead to a girlfriend

I would have become an even bigger R&B star than Keith Sweat ever was...

....

One day I saw my little daughter spanking one of her dolls for some imaginary wrong

And I realized all I had learned was that Black childhood amounted to an inheritance of hand-me- down torture,

A passed-on lesson that power is always measured

by how much pain you can inflict on someone else.

This is what my people were taught for centuries by people using

Rapes and manacles, pig ears and horse whips, 

The ghosts of which

Still haunt us in relaxer cream and light skin/dark skin arguments

And the reality is that a million whuppings didn't stop a million Black boys from avoiding prison 

the same reality is that -

a lot of those whippings that whites gave to blacks 

should have been given to their own children 

If not for this disparate distribution of parental punishments,

Every other Black brother would not have a probation officer...

And the worst terrorist in the world 

would not have turned out to be little Timmy,

Who, once he has reached the age of legal gun ownership

Has decided to avenge all those times he got picked on in gym class

I'm sure there are better ways to discipline kids

Than via same method that made Kunta Kinte change is whole name

Although I must admit, it sounds a bit ridiculous 

To rely solely on time outs for when Timmy cusses at his mama

Despite my nostalgic misgivings I can't help but think:

Timmy would have stopped long time ago if just one time...

His mama sent him outside and made him pick his own switch...

Amber Guyger

I just shot a man They say that you shouldn't text and drive and I can certainly testify That this applies equally to walking down a flight of stairs
Of any apartment building in Dallas Texas I just shot a man But how in the world can you blame me He was not supposed to be here Should have gone with everyone else On Marcus Garvey's Black Star line… Should have gotten out of Texas When Lincoln made his postwar suggestion
That all niggers should move to Panama
Because after all, the Civil War was really our fault I just shot a man Sitting in his apartment that I thought was mine Don’t blame me There's a reason why the stripes on the flag are lily white And Chief Justice Roger Taney had that
Etched in stone insight: Black people will never have respected rights I just shot a man Looking up just long enough from sexting To swipe him left With the end of my glock With less than a second thought I just shot a man There's all kinds of theories why Maybe I was distracted Maybe I was just tired Maybe I just lied ... I just shot a man Because I was just tired Of being treated like a trophy Tired of being arm candy on the elbow of a basketball player Tired of being appropriated That's my good hair being sold in weave shops That even Beyonce co ops That's my bulimia Being taught as a method of staying in shape for fall fashion I just shot a man Because I am still invisible Still not good enough to stop
Thomas Jefferson from f****** the women he thought were subhuman And those people they said that had no rights...? Got the one to vote before I did... I just shot a man I'm sure it was a monster So I shot him to stop him From seizing me and treating me like King Kong did Fay Wray I just shot a man And just where do you think Darren Wilson learned to do that from? We’re the ones who raised the sons that put on the badges Handed down from fugitive slave captors Mama's the one that taught them fear Rodney King and Mike Brown
Are the results of what we've whispered in their ear I just shot a man Because I'm scared that the lashes on your back Will eventually cause you to lash back You might pity us or learn to love us But you will always turn on us Look at Nat Turner For all his heroism and rebellion He only killed one person A Maggie with the good hair That he loved secretly Who he bashed with a fence post All because he was being taunted by the homie to prove his Blackness So I shot a man While he was eating ice cream It was probably vanilla Which means he only wanted to devour me Because black power means kill Whitey And ain’t I somebody? Ain’t I a woman? Why can’t I have a dream? I just wanted to be a cop do drug busts and traffic stops rid the streets of bank robbers and dope fiends walk my racist dog live my racist dreams Not be like the Dallas cops shot by Micah Johnson in 2017
I just shot a man Why am i not a hero? I mean if you look at my shots as preemptive Then what I did might just be redemptive One way or another I got a drug dealer off the street Maybe I saved a baby mama from getting beat Maybe he sold cocaine Maybe him and his homies ran trains I just shot a man After all, ain't I an endangered species? Even the sun doesn't like me No level of spf is enough protection From all this pro black radiation And the burning lasers of the sisters' eyes If I walk down streets with a brotha's hand in mine I just shot a man Because We still feel cheated Lying in bed all alone in that big ol plantation home While hubby is out back Visiting late night in the servants shack I just shot a man Seems to be the only way to get attention The only way we're considered alive Is when we take someone else's life I just shot a man 2 shots to the chest For wanting to stare so hard at mine But I'ma be ok Just gimme a Bible and hug From the brotha and the judge I just shot a man But I have little doubt I'll soon be forgot for some other scared cop Seeing the next person sitting on their own couch Peeking thru a window... ...Ready to take the next shot...

Medusa in Obsidian

My heart told me not to do it
It would tell me things like: Run the other way, that tragically she is not as beautiful as her face



I fell in love with you

Even now when i see you
My joints stiffen a bit
My jaw clenches and eyes squint
But
I do not turn to stone

I am unmoved by your stare
immune to the snakes biting
at my fingers running thru your hair

I look lovingly at you still
And I do not turn to stone

Your poison courses thru my veins
like vitamins, viruses, and vocodin
Your pain makes a criss-cross pattern across
The skin of my back like
A map to Perdition and Penitence
Plotted by a now broke slave master who takes out his
frustrations on stay-behind-slaves
who didn't leave his ass for Northern factories and ghettos

Your beauty has been your curse since birth
And the verdant stare of Athena
that made her hand unfair
Twisting your beauty into terror and anger
Rendering men into stasis

But Not me...
I do not turn to stone

I see you.
Through all of the crimson and color of shadows
I can hear your heart beat symphonies
Over your snarling and the gnashing of your teeth

I know that your gorgeous face
Is just a cap of crusted dirt
covering the throat of a volcano
itching to vomit destruction
Your name is not what's on your birth certificate
It is Krakatau, or  Saint Helen of Vesuvius

But I see thru you like the lies of 4 year old
Your uncertainty and insecurities
Stand out like bumps and dashes to the blind
And my fingertips reveled in reading your epic tales
as they trailed over your skin

I know you are scared
I know you were scarred

And i still stare at you and did not blink
I do not turn to stone

I loved you like a Muslim loves death
I waved love around like a sword
Until you took it from me and stabbed it into my own back

And even as I sat in the dark of prison like Jonah in a fish
Bleeding out your lies into to puddles
I regretted what I never got to tell you

Like i never got to tell you how mysteriously glorious you made me feel
That first day said the single word that began our whirlwind romance:
All you spoke was my name and I  became instantly yours...
Or how when you melted into me
like dawn does the night sky that night on our first date
Or how all the little things from your smile
to the little love notes you'd leave in my pocket
made the most beautiful kaleidoscope out of the stars and hearts that clouded my eyes

I don't know how it all exploded
Like my heart was stepped on by Godzilla
Like when I tried to give you all of me, you gave me the gift of Nagasaki

In purgatory, I used to have a dream where I would wake up and find you sitting at the foot of my bed

Smiling at me silently like Mona Lisa
I would try to embrace you before waking up would erase you

There I have always wondered if I would get the chance to tell you
How as I studied the life of Amiri Baraka,
I noticed his wife Amina look just like you...
From the tilt of her neck, to how she held her kids, how her sandaled feet with bunched up toes 

look just like they walked the entire globe

 looking for me, like a missing puzzle piece that fell out of her heart
How these random things would actually be recognizable to me
was a sign from the Devine
like a sea being parted by a prayer like your arms that I  want do desperately to suround me and drown me 

But mamas are always right

And the hope we gave has sadly turned into hate
Turning ourOur "Love Is" into a "Love Aint"
Our Will and Jada, our Martin and Gina
Into a Brangelina being broken
Now I just want to drag my incomplete heart thru broken glass and barbed wire
until Emmet Till's mother is the only person who can recognize the love that I am missing

I do not know why
that Black church forgave Dylan Roof
I do not know why the brother or the judge hugged a guilty Amber

but I do know
I would be the frog again and trust scorpion on my back for another ride across the river just for another touch of ymy skin on yours
I would let you stick the stiletto of desire into my ribs
To bleed out our possibilities into a crimson river of dream and lovepoems about what we should have and supposed to bes

There will always be that spark that our cheeks light  every time we hug
So I will be the firefighter to your toxic pyromania
I have more blood for you to collect from my neck to sip , slip your fangs in, give me your most painful kiss again and again

Let mekiss you back while squeeze your neck as I 
Inhale deep your butterscotch breath  capture the deepest part of you sweaters part of me deep in my chest

Hell, I don't know what this really is I feel for you

That I feel anything labeled with you is a blessing I do not really deserve

The irony about Medusa is that she was the most beautiful woman in the world
And we Men did what  then what men still do to beauty today

It's What we have always done:

We steal it
We tear it in two,  with my little to no  no apologies 
And  the goddess Athena did to her what we do still to victims
We blame you and made you ugly

And you did what Medusa did
You made your face a mask meant scare love away

I wish you knew how untrue to yourself you still really are
How your pain is are just gauze bandages hiding you like a mummy
How you have weaponized your low self esteem to turn yourself into a minstrel superstar like Candace Owens, Stacy Dash

I do not know why God gave you to me as such a beautiful affliction
But even  now when i wake up, I still see you smiling at me at the foot of the bed

Last night's dream, your feet feet were entangled there with mine

The lesson I have finally learned
Is as I learn  to love myself more
I've  haven't learned to love you less

Even when as I love you at distance we  are still obsessed with each other

You want to reject me and still hold me close  and I remain the one trough every bit of pain 
 who loves and knows you the most

I am your Perseus  who knows hat in order to  be with you I must use 

a strategy of reflection to get  and stay near
And so tomorrow dearest queen Black queen I am going to make you mine-  again and forever,
This time you will wake up in a dream and find me at the foot of your bed
Smiling and lovingly holding a platinum ring...

 And a mirror

Visibility

The south doesn’t see it

Because they are still blinded by the bloody
lies smeared into their eyes

Put there by fingertips pricked by the

Cotton bolls they’ve had to pick themselves
After their free labor left on June 19th

They have always been told
That too many sweets will kill you

But they do not know

That’s not diabetes that has them peeing blood

That’s ground glass mixed into their sugar bowl

In the slave shacks we call that recipe:
Sally Hemmings revenge

The south has wrung their hands and
scratched their heads in wonder

They do not comprehend the irony
Of calling a nigger lazy

And they cannot seem to fathom

How we’ve gotten so uppity

So uppity that we literally floated away

Like a million Muslims making pilgrimage o
magic carpets

To a mecca called "the north"

The south doesn’t see

How blurred the mason Dixon is

They think it’s etched in granite

But we’ve always known its drawn with invisible ink

That everything below Canada w
always consideredt the entire south

That We did not burn Watts, Chicago,
and Harlem out of boredom

But the south never saw the fires as familiar

They never assumed the projects were
the siblings of plantations

So they simply marveled at our audacity

How could we be so ungrateful

Towards the liberty of their slavery

How dare we assume their mantel of humanity

How dare we enter polls and meddle in their polity

How could we not want to swing anymore
from their poplar trees?

The south doesn't see

There is no such thing as the past d
in the Bayou and the old farms

Because things have never changed into a future

They still have watermelon eating contests

And say nigger with the same accent on the R

And now there's new language for old meanings-

The slaves quarters are still there

They are just called cellblocks now

And the fugitive slave act cocooned itself

Only to burst forth as a butterfly called probable cause

The south doesn’t see

They are too busy building border walls a
detention centers

To notice more of themselves are being locked down

That the war on drugs has taken them as new POW’s now

And their own mothers and fathers have
become the wardens who can offer no explanation

For the incarceration of their own offspring

The south doesn’t see

The fire in our bellies lit first o
the gold coast and Florida swamps

The fire that made mommas throw babies
Into the sea to drown free

The fire that burns in Cinque eyes

That lit the torches and towns
Walked by Denmark Vessy and John Brown

That tore Harlem and watts and Detroit down

That fire that put furrows of pain on Rodney King’s forehead 

And caused Reginal Denny’s loss of memory

The type of amnesia that OJ and Tiger caught

And our own forgetfulness,
because we still cheered them both on while they
Disowned us

The South doesn't see
The Crip walk of Serena like she was dancing o
the embers of burning crosses

It’s that flame that we all carry in the pits of our own bellies

That makes us grit our teeth and clench our fists

To tear down confederate flags
And hurl blood on General Lee's statue

To want to resurrect Oakland’s lunch program

To run for Ferguson’s city council

The south does not see

We are learning that participation or presidency 

Will not make them view us as equal or fully human

We are learning that we must break it, tear it, and burn it all down

We are learning to abolish the black caucus
and charlatans like Jackson and Sharpton

And to say fuck an image award

Give me instead a hammer and a crow bar

We are learning that It’ll take more than a hashtag t
stop these assassins with badges

We have to bring noise, thunder, rain and pain

Destruction and then resurrection

And then the south, north, east and west will finally see 

We have learned what it is to be finally and truly free

Shoe Game

She told me one day that a do-over relationship with me

would be like slipping on an old comfortable shoe

There are two things I learned from her confession

1: we have always had failures to communicate

Struggling to see things the same way while standing on uncommon ground

Me? My old comfortable shoes are, first: old

Beat up and faded

Leather cracked and sueded

Shoe strings dingy brown with the tips missing and frayed

Factory insole long gone, replaced by a Dr. Scholl

That’s well-past its recommended time for replacement

It’s a shoe I only wear around the house

Generally to do yard work or work on the car

I would never ever ever wear them to the mall

Hell not even for a 7/11 slurpee run

And this is what I am to her?

And, just what is an old comfortable shoe to a woman?

A Croc?

A smelly Ugg?

Do women even want comfortable shoes?

I mean, with all those heels, wedges, and stilettos

Red bottoms and Jimmy choos that give them

All those bunions and hammertoes

Making them walk oh-so gingerly a
And fall oh- so hilariously

What do women really even know about comfort and shoes?

She said being with me would be like slipping

Back into an old comfortable shoe

And so, the second thing I learned from her confession,

That came to me while I was buying

A brand new pair of crisp and clean Air Jordans,

Was that we are never ever ever…

Ever going to get back together

Cardinal Sin: A Reply to the Period Poem

Lesson number one:
Fables and nursery rhymes
Are told to children at bedtimes
As apologetics for plagues and the treachery of royal families
Which is why I’m sure Period Poems are just well-recited fibs
Meant as a cover up for mental malignancy 

 
Lesson number two:
The word "period" can cause linguistic confusion
Not unlike the word "napkin"
Because it Ends and begins something at the same time
Because it can be a culmination or A Dream Deferred -
I'd like to think that Dash or Ellipsis 

Is a more grammatically appropriate word 

 
Lesson number three:
Period Poems are  protests of patriarchy hijacked by hypocrisy
You’ve come such a long way baby
You kick us out of the kitchen
Smacked our hands if we dip our fingers in The Sauce
But way too many dudes still rule Gynecology
Still dipping fingers in The Sauce 

And when it came down to the wire, way too many of you
Picked a Pussy Grabber over a First Lady

But I imagine that’s a consequence of you letting us convince you 

That the cure for hysteria was to rip out your uterus 

Oh and that black girl magic
Didn’t work out so well when it came to Omarosa did it?

Lesson number four:

The word "amazon" is thought to linguistically mean "not having breasts"

Legend has it, that in order to be as good as a male archer

Amazon Warriors had to cut off the titty that got in the way of their bow string
These days, when a woman starts to become an Amazon,

Breast and periods are the first thing to go 

And the next thing you know
She’s lying on her husband and forging her mama’s name 

In order to make Mama pay for stolen titty implants 

Lesson number five:
Never confuse a period for sacrament
You only pray when it doesn’t show up
Go ask Onan of the Old Testament
Which bodily fluid is really the holiest of holies

Lesson number six:
The wifey stays when the hubby gets paid

So you got played
If you drank Beyonce's lemonade 

 
Lesson number seven:
Periods are not power
Real power lies in the postpartum aftermath of slave mothers impregnated by their master
Real power lies in the hand of the slave husband who raised those kids as his own
Real power is in the handful of sand
That some sistesr packed into their own vaginas
To avoid being raped by government soldiers and the KKK
Their tears mixed in with memories
To give birth to the concrete children we call our great-great-grandparents 

Lesson number eight:
One of the mothers of my faith was a 6th Century slave named Summaya
Who died the first martyr of Islam
Because she refused to reject her Lord
And so her master laid her on the desert floor
And impaled her through the uterus with his spear
The river of blood that flowed out of her, 

Gave birth to a thousand points of light
Like my daughter 

Lesson number nine:
A Kotex it’s not the Holy Grail -
Its contents are not meant for communion
But the prophet-of-prophets taught us
There exists only with women 

A real place of Solace and absolution 

 
It is not to be found running down
The inside of your thighs
In a Cardinal Red River of regret
But it is at the feet of mothers that the gates of paradise rest...

Just waiting for us to enter -
If only we stopped remembering to forget

 

Patriarchy Is Not Dead

Patriarchy is not dead
Despite the tidings of hashtags, drag queens, and crying Jordan memes
Patriarchy is not dead

Its just sleep - choked unconscious by the prolific use of skinny jeans
But Al Bundy still lives
He's got a better job and takes showers every day
and still drives a Dodge
And still meets nightly in the basement with members of NOMA'AM

Patriarchy is not dead
Its only been stretched and mutated
by the orange and red heads of the last 2 superpowers
Who have shown us you can grab pussies
And ride horseback with a bare chest and still be voted in as President

Patriarchy is not dead
It's just been hidden in the long shadows
of freed nipples that poke out on Instagram
And while there may not be an ironing board in the Oval Office -
First Lady is still the title of an unpaid housewife

Nope Patriarchy is not dead
It's just migrated into virtual reality
Where "I've been sexually harassed?"
and "Im the idiot who voted for Trumps ass"
is represented by the same #METOO hashtag

Patriarchy is not dead
its simply reached world wide hegemony like Catholic Christianity
And why both of those things struggle with questionable masculinity

And Men in church steeples stumbling from the
1-2 punch of pedophilia and peanut butter allergies

Patriarchy is not dead
It's buried under helicopter moms
and participation medals for coming in 4th place on Field Day

Patriarchy is not dead
Even ladies wearing sleeveless lumberjack shirts and wallet chains
underscore that you really don't hate what you try to imitate

Patriarchy is not dead
Not since that one designer took the concept of red light districts
and painted it on the bottom of an overpriced stiletto

How can patriarchy die if so many aspire to have
The official shoe of the hoe-stroll in their closet?

How can it die if when so many girls who like girls
Call themselves bois -  they just spell it with an spelled with an "i"...?

Patriarchy is not dead
because feminism for a long time has been an apparition...
Killed off by hollow suffragette mottos
of "give us white women the  right to vote so that Black people don't"

Patriarchy is not dead
RuPaul still gets blue balls
Caitlyn Jenner is still a father
And Victoria's biggest secret is that it and tampons were both invented by a dude

Patriarchy lives because it became immortal
When women realized vagina could be a commodity
And if you squint real hard you'll see we treat it
The same way as sugar tobacco and opium -
...Except sometimes we just use a layaway plan to buy it...

Patriarchy is not dead because
We'll put a price-tag on anything that can strip a man of his dignity
That's why marriages come with dowries and wedding rings

No, Patriarchy is not dead
Its sitting right there staring at you from the Supreme Court bench
Not  talking abut Cavanaugh - I mean that coon Justice Thomas 

Sure, patriarchy is struggling for its breath
But I can hear them digging a fresh grave
For Roe versus Wade
And nobody these days

is as familiar with Elizabeth Cady Stanton
as with than the least popular Kardashian

No, Patriarchy is not dead
It was the first sin to occur
When Adam bit the apple
And blamed his stupidity on her
And we have been buying rings from Jared's
Trying to make up for it ever since

Patriarchy is not dead
its just hiding like the monster under your bed
And as long as a the camel can't pass thru a needle
Or a fetus thru a penis
Patriarchy will live on forever, kicking and screaming

Greater Than...

When I say Allahu Akbar
It is not to hearken the arrival of
A bullet or
A Molotov cocktail

When I say Allahu Akbar
I'm not at a bus stop -
Strapped into a vest that's packed
with plastique and ball bearings
Ready to take the lives of those simply trying to make a living

I do not whisper Allahu Akbar
to accompany the edge of a knife being held against
The neck of any innocent person
simply because I do not agree with their religion

Because Allahu Akbar is not a license
to kill or convert
It is not the translation of "death to all infidels" in any language

Allahu Akbar is not a preamble to an ISIS decapitation
Or  a thief's amputation
Nor is it the mantra of self-righteous religious indignation

However, I did say Allahu Akbar when
my daughter was born - when
her head crowned and i didn't know what it was
and as she burst forth, so did my tears of joy and every last fear

And I said Allahu Akbar right after I cut her  umbilical cord, grateful to be what every father should be: PRESENT

And I say it right after that first sip of water
to break my fast during Ramadan
Especially when it occurs during the long summer months
And I swear I am dying of thirst
and that sple sip ofwater tastes like mercy itself

I said Allahu Akbar when
I saw the unratchit reality of a Black couple loving each other and praying together on tv
When my niece chose to wear a headscarf instead of a mini skirt
When Shaq say "as Salaamu alaikum"
When Mos Def drops a cypher
When Dave Chapelle does a Netflix special

Because Allahu Akbar is NOT for celebrating an IED detonation
But it IS for when the wino stumbles to the door of the mosque instead of the liquor store
And for the kid with autism who eats butter with a spoon like it's ice cream,  when he learns to read and tie his own shoe

It's for after you hydroplane on the highway, life flashing before you,  as you skid safely back to dry asphalt just the end-credits of your life start rolling

Allahu Akbar is for when
It rains in Southern California
And snows in San Antonio

For the last payment of your student loan,
And for the ex-convict who finds a job and can actually buy a home

Allahu Akbar does not seek your demise or downfall
It does not mow down atheists
Or oblivious shoppers in African malls

Any more than "In God We Trust" can be called the mantra of those 500 pound bombs
that we drop on little Afghan girls

Any more than the Army gift wrapping Gideon Bibles
In blankets full of small  pox as gifts to Natives  inspired the  national as anthem

Any more than the greeting of "mazel tov"
Was meant to invite Rachel Corrie
To her grave when she met the Israeli
Bulldozer that smashed her permanently into Palestine soil

I said Allahu Akbar when Danette's pregnancy test came back positive
After the malice of an ex wife killed my last one

I say Allahu Akbar for the butterfly
That has to break out of a cocoon made of silk
Silk being the strongest textiles ever

And it  yet has to do it alone
Because If you come by and try to help, you will actually kill the butterfly

We say Allahu Akbar
Because struggle is the theme of life

I said Allahu Akbar as I stood not so bravely
in the middle of a grave burying my sister in an islamic funeral
When they handed me her dead body
She was so light, like the weight  of the world was finally off of her shoulders...
Allahu Akbar that we don't drop her
Allahu Akbar as we lay her in the dirt
Wrapped up like a gift we are giving back to God with her face turned towards Mecca
Allahu Akbar as we throw our handfuls of dirt
As we walk away leaving prayers in our wake

I say Allahu Akbar about a hundred times a day
It has taught me to weave poetry into patience
Instead of into a eulogy
It has taught me to unclench my fist, and  ungrit my teeth
And learn how to
Just
Breathe


But inexplicably, Allahu Akbar has become
a paradox of paranoia, absurd
Of ugly and loud extremist voices that
Gargle and garble this beautiful word

Words that proceed the suicidal slaughter
Of insecure cowards who think
They will end up martyrs

They won't.

But God remains
Greater than everything we can think of
Or ever endeavor to try to say

And if only our hearts would just simply stay
striving and struggling to utter those beautiful words

In more and more better and beautiful ways...!