Poéfrika

Happy belated birthday, Muhammad Ali!

2012-01-21T00:09:00.000+01:00

Muhammad Ali was born on 17 January 1942. Happy Birthday to him.
© and photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org

Simon II

2012-01-19T13:02:00.001+01:00

On his way to the synagogue, Simon
grabbed god’s cross and dragged it
across to Golgotha. No one knew
if the time was right. But after tea when
the sun, going home, threw
against the city walls three shadows
just like scarecrows in the night,
a night which climbed his stairs
with a lamp and a book of poems
in its black hand, and stood at his bed
enveloping him silently with the dead,
he grabbed the book and read a poem.
There was no meaning in it for him.

Simon: http://www.canopicpublishing.com/canopicjar/25/retsimon.htm

An interview with Isobel Dixon

2012-01-10T06:42:00.001+01:00

I met Isobel Dixon at the London launch of Sidekick Books wonderful Birdbook I last summer - her Upupa Epops (you're all such keen birders that you don't need me to tell you what species that's the scientific name of, do you?) is one of the volume's highlights, for me, and a good taster for the superb collection in which it appears, The Tempest Prognosticator.

She was born in Umtata, South Africa, and came to Scotland to study in 1993. She works in London as a literary agent, representing a range of clients, including many prominent South African writers. Her work is included in publications like The Paris Review, The Guardian, Penguin's Poems for Love, The Forward Book of Poetry and The Best of British Poetry 2011. Her first collection Weather Eye won South Africa’s Sanlam and Olive Schreiner Prizes. Her second collection A Fold in the Map was published in the UK by Salt and in South Africa by Jacana, and The Tempest Prognosticator, is published in the UK by Salt and in South Africa by Random House's Umuzi imprint. It’s been described as "a virtuoso collection" by J M Coetzee and an "ingenious carousel of a book" by David Morley.

Continue there: Polyolbion: An interview with Isobel Dixon

Sometimes There Is a Void

2012-01-10T06:17:00.001+01:00

Zakes Mda's life story, Sometimes There is a Void, is a fascinating shambles.

Mda is born the awkward son of a political activist who walked with revolutionary giants. He grows up too fast in political exile in Lesotho, straying for a time as a drunken wastrel. He eventually finds his place in the world as a talented young novelist and playwright who realizes the best way he can serve his people is to give them a voice. In a racist world that viewed black South Africans as ill-educated brutes, Mda helped to change the narrative, creating complex characters who forced outsiders to rethink their misinformed prejudices.

Continue there: Sometimes There Is a Void - CSMonitor.com

Incident

2012-01-10T06:02:00.001+01:00

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."

Continue there: Morphological Confetti: Harlem Renaissance Poet: Countee Cullen

"Fire", by Kwame Dawes

2012-01-06T18:50:00.001+01:00

He is the man with the axe with its white edge.
He was born to a time of fire.
He took a pickaxe and walked to the rail
track and asked for work; and he stood
by the sparks and forging fire, standing
there as if the heat is food, pure food.

Continue here Fire | The American Poetry Review

African culture uncensored

2011-12-23T19:44:00.000+01:00

The Igbo of Nigeria have a proverb popularised by writer Chinua Achebe that goes: "Unless it dies young, the penis shall surely eat bearded meat." This was a way, I guess, to say that things happen in due course and there is no point in rushing to indulge in sexual activities. The testicles, penis and their exploits are a point of reference.

In Zambia the Bemba coined a saying, "ubuchende bwamwaume tabonaula nganda", which translates to "a man's whoring does not break up a family". These chauvinistic words, the roots of which must lie in polygamy, seem to suggest that it is alright for men to sleep around. Or, alternatively, that the family can survive the vagaries of patriarchy. It is perhaps what a Guinean proverb refers to that says: "A child can play with its mother's breasts, but not its father's testicles."

The word "chende", the root for the word for testicles in some languages, is quite popular in African proverbs. In Ghana there is a proverb, "It requires a lot of carefulness to kill the fly that perches on the scrotum", which does not really require explanation.

From [African culture uncensored - News - Mail & Guardian Online]

Poetry’s in motion in Gauteng

2011-12-21T08:17:00.000+01:00

The annual Urban Voices International Festival did not have a poetry programme this year and we did not have the annual Speak The Mind Poetry sessions either. However, poetry and spoken word maintained a strong presence in the Gauteng arts scene.

The launch of the Melville Poetry Festival was an exciting addition and the three-day event showed off a variety of voices and presentations showcasing poetry for the page and for the stage.

The Word N Sound Poetry brand, which recently celebrated its first anniversary with a live music and poetry festival, has had an impact with how it’s nurturing young and up-and-coming voices, while inviting veterans to share and inspire.

From: [Poetry’s in motion in Gauteng]

Happy birthday, Donald Woods!

2011-12-15T15:36:00.000+01:00

Donald James Woods, CBE (December 15, 1933 – August 19, 2001) was a South African journalist and anti-apartheid activist.

As editor of the Daily Dispatch from 1965 to 1977, he befriended Steve Biko, leader of the anti-apartheid Black Consciousness Movement, and was banned by the government soon after Biko's death, which had been caused by serious head injuries, sustained while in police custody. The govenment [sic] still denies giving Biko these injuries, even though the officers have admited to beating Biko to the point of neve [sic] and brain damage. Woods fled to London, where he continued to foster opposition to apartheid. In 1978, he became the first private citizen to address the U.N. Security Council.
[source...]

Donald was Biko's friend and an activist against Apartheid. After the June '76 Soweto Riots, the government turned its guns on people like him. He disguised himself and crossed the Tele bridge into Lesotho using a fake passport. His family joined him in Lesotho, and with the help of the British High Commission there, they were flown to London, and to safety.

Donald was born on 15 December 1933. Happy birthday to him.

Mountain at Night

2011-12-14T19:50:00.000+01:00

for Lineo, 'Masekoja and 'Makananelo

After swallowing me my mother emptied
me, along tracks of ancestral feet she had me.
Thaba-Bosiu, the mountain at night. We needed
your plateau at the top to help us crush skulls
into chalk with stone and brick, for the king
had made his village there, and growing at night
made passes steep to keep foes out.
When my cradle rocked the clay floor
of my mother's hut, nobody was allowed near
if I wasn't asleep. I think my parents
held their breath when approaching me,
ears against my lilac mouth
to hear my lungs, till I heaved and let go,
and shivered down as they traipsed into their room
to get on with what adults do on a winter’s night—
they needed to feel each other down like teens
in the dark. I remember, or think I do,
my parents heaving in that room,
getting each other off. When I was older I met a girl
who, like my mother, couldn't stomach lumps;
we'd lie there Kegeling, clinging like spoons,
three if you counted the child whose life
at the turn of the millennium when gods gave gifts,
was about to enter a world my wife and I
had spread in the season for the sun to dry.

Wordle 4 December 2011

2011-12-04T09:12:00.001+01:00

Benjamin Masilonyane Masilo (14 Oct 1931 - 1 Dec 2011)

2011-12-02T00:08:00.001+01:00

"He was the most beautiful person I had ever known. He had known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and he found his way out of the depths.

He had an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that filled him with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.

There is so much I did not understand about him, but I surely know that beautiful people do not just happen. My father did not just happen. His being was decreed.

Re roballe Mokhatla. Ke u rata kamehla."

Kananelo Rearabiloe Masilo.

Prophet Seekers for Dennis Brutus

2011-11-28T08:02:00.000+01:00

Someday our mast will peer from the edge's mist
And rise. And we will cast anchor and dock,
The prow a proud man's chest,
Our sails witness to the absence of any storm.
Bounty from our exile will have long ceased
To thrash, as we carry it gleaming off the deck,
And there'll be folly in people's eyes, our goods
Stamped with god’s ink. Then we'll go
To the cemetery to look, beyond flowers
And rumpled grasses, for the prophet's tomb,
Its inscription will say bulalani abathagathi,
And will be as stark as it must have sounded
When it was first said. We mouth it and shake
Spears at the foe. But the truth is, we come here
With gifts and trophies of wanderings for the children,
Like the time America made us miss home
And we walked the streets clad in Basotho
Blankets. Or listening to long nights of rain
Spill pebbles on the roof. Of course
This is our home, because the rainbow
Claims it. Past is the time of love handcuffed
To a pole. On a cobble-stone path the prophet
Appears with a rustle of leaves between graves,
Swinging fists like Dennis, who persuaded
All of us that love is the only revolution.

Happy birthday, Dennis!

2011-11-28T07:37:00.000+01:00

Dennis Vincent Brutus (born November 28, 1924, Salisbury, Rhodesia) is a South African poet. A graduate of the University of Fort Hare and the University of the Witwatersrand, Brutus was formerly on the faculty of the University of Denver and Northwestern University.

Dennis Brutus was an activist against the apartheid government of South Africa in the 1960s. He worked to get South Africa suspended from the Olympics; this eventually lead to the country's expulsion from the games in 1970. He joined the Anti-Coloured Affairs Department organisation (Anti-CAD), a group that organised against the Coloured Affairs Department which was an attempt by the government to institutionalise divisions between blacks and coloureds. The Anti-CAD was affiliated to the Trotskyist Fourth International in South Africa. He was arrested in 1963 and jailed for 18 months on Robben Island.

Brutus was forbidden to teach, write and publish in South Africa. Sirens, Knuckles and Boots, his first collection of poetry, was published in Nigeria while he was in prison. The book was awarded the Mbari Poetry Prize, awarded to a black poet of distinction, but Brutus turned it down on the grounds of its racial exclusivity.

After he was released, Brutus fled South Africa. In 1983, Brutus won the right to stay in the United States as a political refugee, after a protracted legal struggle. He was "unbanned" in 1990. He is the Professor Emeritus of [the]University of Pittsburgh. He has now returned to South Africa and is based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where he often contributes to the annual Poetry Festival hosted by the University. He continues to support activism against neo-liberal policies in contemporary South Africa via insertion in a network of largely Trotskyist led NGOs. This activism includes supporting struggles against the management of the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
[source...]

In my mind Dennis Brutus is one of the people who have me reading and writing poetry today. His book, Letters to Martha, was the first poetry book I ever bought, and two of his poems in it, Letters to Martha, 1 and 2, the first poems I ever read that many times.

I was intrigued by the way he communicated something so complex (hatred and racism) in such a simple way. I liked how Mr Brutus used art to kick the arse of injustice. And he was doing it against my arch-enemy, apartheid. Dennis was born on 28 November 1924 in Rhodesia, which is the present day Zimbabwe. Happy birthday to him.

DEAR GOD

Dear God
get me out of here:
let me go somewhere else
where I can fight the evil
which surrounds me here
and which I am forbidden to fight
—but do not take from me my anger
my indignation at injustice
so that I may continue to burn
to right it or destroy.

Oh I know
I have asked for this before
in other predicaments
and found myself most wildly involved

But if it be possible
and conformable to your will
dear God,
get me out of here.
© Dennis Brutus

----------
south african writing, dennis brutus

People of Stone

2011-11-20T01:41:00.006+01:00

~for the Occupy movement

Look how their eyes search
this hour of darkness the world
knows with its heart.

I have been told that
like a foot in a shoe their women
live and die alone.

Tents and bivvies are now
banned. Though the library is open
and someone is reading:

"We will not lay hands on
their foreheads to allay their pain;
and they can't do a thing about it."

Take existence, for example, when mixed
with life in eyes of children—
it'll get the rainbow working again.

At the dwelling of hills and plants
are glass buildings inside which
like mercury we rise,

till earth howls with the agonies
of birth, wearing her cap backward
for luck against citadels of the world.

What Nature Allows

2011-11-17T07:45:00.002+01:00

When mother, through a window
open to the sanctuary of what we had seen,
had announced to the hills and rocks
that dwell on them, granite and sandstone—
after she had called with an echo
in her voice to the sun receding
behind a clump of trees, to bear her message
to the other side that her son was missing
and had last been seen when he left home
on a bright winter day, afraid still of things
nature allows men, she dreamt
a fortunate dream of him walking with us
along the highway. A swan flapped
off a lake when we passed, went for the woods,
shaken by some truth unknown to us who,
bent on leaving Babylon, lifted every stone
along the way and walked each kilometre
forward, as that swan grabbed its yellow legs
and flew into the world toward its eggs.

All Saints' Day

2011-11-02T09:05:00.000+01:00

Name Ten Saints (Ancestors) and Pass Along

Ntate Benjamin Masilonyane Masilo
Abuti Khotsofalang Reaboka Masilo
Mochana, Motlatsi Masilo
Nkhono 'Matšoanelo Mohajana
Ntatemoholo Seth Mohajana
Ntatemoholo Tšoanyane Masilo
Nkhono Emma Libapiso Masilo
Ntatemoholo Mohau Masilo
Dennis Brutus
Stephen Bantu Biko

Happy birthday, Peter Tosh!

2011-10-19T04:26:00.000+02:00

Peter Tosh (October 19, 1944 – September 11, 1987) was the guitarist in the original Wailing Wailers, a pioneer reggae musician, and a trailblazer for the Rastafari movement. Born Winston Hubert McIntosh, Peter grew up in the Kingston, Jamaica slum of Trenchtown.

His short-fuse temper and unveiled sarcasm usually kept him in trouble, earning him the nickname Stepping Razor after a song written by Joe Higgs, an early mentor. He began to sing and learn guitar at a young age, inspired by the American stations he could pick up on his radio.

After an illustrious career with the Wailers and as a solo musician, his life was cut short when he was brutally murdered at his home. Though robbery was officially said to be the motivation behind Tosh's death, many believe that there were ulterior motives to the killing, citing that nothing was taken from the house.
[source]

Troy Davis

2011-10-18T12:54:00.005+02:00

The sun on the horizon
bodes dawn, unknown by your body
led away, labelled dead
and walking at once, a book
open in their hands, of psalms
read like love poems on the hour
of your death—
they killed you a dime's death
with no miracle, no book
to save your history.
After those as strong as you
in space where hounds
howl at the heel, and who
were captured, lamps raised
to pin them in darkness
like van-lit deer,
the pain of jubilating
black voices sang, jazz,
the drugged corner of your eyes
exuding what some
came to see, the crawl
of latex on your rubber tree,
on the dark of your arm.
A brutal dragging of Georgia's
red meat across the dirt.
At this time of books
and scientific acumen it remains
unknown why you must die,
on the the brink of a twilight
of latent reason and love.

Pomegranate

2011-10-18T05:03:00.008+02:00

The crop, on the ledge of
a terrace where big boulders
cave under it, is heavy
with sap. The mountain
has never seen anything like it,
no shepherd tasted the variety,
no mother cooked such
flesh, made in the months
of summer by love for mouths
that crush and move the tongue
along the top of the palate,
licking and pressing the wine,
strong as Eden's orchard
whose blood we tasted, follicle
of kings, folly to the world,
flesh Lucy's children ate
when the world was fresh.

Tšepe

2011-10-10T11:47:00.001+02:00

Kommanda Obbs 2 - YouTube

Happy birthday, Abdullah Ibrahim

2011-10-09T07:34:00.000+02:00

'Since he first fled South Africa in 1962, Ibrahim's increasingly spiritual and meditative jazz has won followers across Europe, the US and Japan and made him an icon at home. In the 50s as Dollar Brand (he took the name Abdullah Ibrahim in the 60s when he converted to Islam), he led Cape Town's short-lived flowering of bebop-inspired jazz. When the apartheid clampdown came, he became one of the most successful, and - with some 100 albums - prolific, musicians in the exodus, alongside the singer Miriam Makeba and the trumpeter Hugh Masekela.

For Rob Allingham, a music historian and archivist at Gallo records in Johannesburg, Ibrahim was unique in "making it in the international jazz world without qualifications". A protege of Duke Ellington, he developed free-form jazz in New York in the 60s, playing with John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. Yet his fusion draws on Cape Town roots. Nigel Williamson, a music critic and compiler of a recent Ibrahim retrospective CD, says that "more than anyone else, Ibrahim united African roots with 20th-century American jazz; he's always had a profound sense that jazz is African music". Ellington told him: "You're blessed because you come from the source."'
[source]

If you like jazz, even a little, you must get some Abdullah Ibrahim (visit this link and click on "listen to samples") for yourself. Listening to him, I hear African choral music and American jazz all at once. 2002's African Magic is one of my favourites. Mr Ibrahim was born on 9 October 1934. Happy birthday to him.

Morning

2011-10-04T17:35:00.002+02:00

You—after midnight had rumbled
and lightning had stabbed its knives
into your heart, and you’d listened
to its after-claps in the spitting rain—
rose, took yourself like a coat
from behind a door, down the steps
of dawn still asleep, spread along
blinking lanes of wet asphalt.
Neon lights winked at streets as if
at the arriving morning. And now
below his window whores laugh
as if they know you're gone—
whores all of them, as next to himself
he lies, near his missing half.

Abraham’s Soul

2011-09-30T17:43:00.001+02:00

And though others look elsewhere for promise—to a sort of heaven in the stars—
I shall be gone from here with no answers
to leave my children, except perhaps
the taste in the mouth she has kissed, gold thighs
that have been given to me. In a month,
crickets will be back here to sing and mate in summer's
heat. One summer, her old man got his head blown off.
The minute I went through his journals every moment
knew of her, as I compared his calculation to what
is so true about a breast, and saw her by far
some sun with earths around it. We put him to rest
in a donga with hay for a pillow, and no answers
lay there, either, nothing new for an aggrieved world,
no linking of hands across America. Except the times
such love hankers after Abraham’s soul, forgetting
how generous, and forgiving, is the solitary leaf.

Song & Dance by Basotho men

2011-09-20T09:45:00.000+02:00

The dance is called mohobelo, it's a men's dance. This type of song is a lengae. In the background there's usually (like here) a praise poet (mothothokisi) rapping. In the foreground is the sephokoli or song leader. Then the "choir", backing it all up with bass. I particularly like the way this sephokoli is leading it all.

The Wood's Edge

2011-09-16T03:05:00.011+02:00

After walking across the forest
at a time of waking, we swung back
to head home like two turned away

by despair in truth. And chose again
the forest, grieving each hour that died

to a church bell, Autumn in leaves
coming to the bottom soon. A hawk
like a kite in mid-air, there, then here,

watched us with disinterested eyes.
I was walking beside you that morning,

breathing in the promise of air. A turn
to the woods and we were in the forest
again, things preceding us: this dark deer

and her fawn ticking off from our midst
into an unintended path, snapping twigs
down a lane. We lacked many things,

fear, natural love, so went along behind
their frightened hooves to the other side.

"Photograph from September 11" by Wisława Szymborska

2011-09-11T19:13:00.000+02:00

They jumped from the burning floors--
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.

Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.

There's enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.

They're still within the air's reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.

I can do only two things for them-
describe this flight
and not add a last line.

They jumped from the burning floors--
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.

Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.

There's enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.

They're still within the air's reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.

I can do only two things for them--
describe this flight
and not add a last line.
-_-_-_-_-

Source: http://huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/09/911-poetry_n_954492.html

You, Therefore

2011-08-29T18:30:00.000+02:00

—for Robert Philen

You are like me, you will die too, but not today:
you, incommensurate, therefore the hours shine:
if I say to you “To you I say,” you have not been
set to music, or broadcast live on the ghost
radio, may never be an oil painting or
Old Master’s charcoal sketch: you are
a concordance of person, number, voice,
and place, strawberries spread through your name
as if it were budding shrubs, how you remind me
of some spring, the waters as cool and clear
(late rain clings to your leaves, shaken by light wind),
which is where you occur in grassy moonlight:
and you are a lily, and aster, white trillium
or viburnum, by all rights mine, white star
in the meadow sky, the snow still arriving
from its earthwards journeys, here where there is
no snow (I dreamed the snow was you,
where there was snow), you are my right,
have come to be my night (your body takes on
the dimensions of sleep, the shape of sleep
becomes you): and you fall from the sky
with several flowers, words spill from your mouth
in waves, your lips taste like the sea, salt-sweet (trees
and seas have flown away, I call it
loving you): home is nowhere, therefore you,
a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all,
and free of any eden we can name.
© Reginald Shepherd

Happy Birthday, Michael Jackson!

2011-08-29T00:02:00.001+02:00

Mr. Jackson

Silences fill the air, the silence
of a jobless face. That of wings
as a bird flies off with a darner
in its beak, and in the mind's eye
the darner flees. Things that are silent
mean colour, feel, touch the language
again; say moth sounds an artist sees
with hands, on this tarred road
that feeds the city of Gary, Indiana, so quiet
only burnt carcasses remind us of the riot,
and freedoms we know are nearing.
A silence overwhelms the street, wearing
an afro and the white teeth of dissidence
or innocence, depending on which side
one is. A woman covers the distance
with vegetable hoopoes in a paper bag. Red
and dark green stalks sticking into the aftermath.
Sacks of potatoes and carrots at our feet.
And we dance, though what it is they seek
we do not know, why wherever we meet
they force us to disperse. The grand silence
has always been of course the first time
any body was able to walk in reverse.
_____

Michael Jackson - Rock With You Vidéo Michael_Jackson sélectionnée dans Musique

Alednam

2011-08-28T12:11:00.003+02:00

To grow old is to know everything,
and so I'll hang here a moon
using the ring you gave me for Christmas;
to grow old is to be Moses, lifting his staff
to part the angry waters of our angry sea,
and in the end raising everything,
this long-stem glass nobody but us
could have filled with this bubbling sea;
to grow old is to watch waters open
so we might reach the promised land.
To grow old together, all love notes
on tops of furniture we haven't dusted
since moving here, after the children's
arrival, tired photos taken under the eye
of the endless moon--growing old together
gives us each half a heart to keep, and
twice the things we would have known
if the moment had offered a face of love
to touch, instead of only fire and ice.

The House in the Woods

2011-08-27T07:43:00.001+02:00

for Martha

The sky opens to this hour of morning
in Maryville, deep in a summer speckled
with southern names. Here we stop and bask
like these flowers defying man’s extremes.
The mountain breathing out, then in, blesses

our effort to add dawn to this new chapter,
at this university whose registrar gathers data
by perceiving lines at the corners of eyes,
seeing past heavy baggage into the heart in
the short time there is, registering more

than the names our small group has to offer,
faces eager, questions caught in our throats.
It is suddenly as if, falling, the leaf is from
some pages of a book that age put there to mark
the validity that this place with its message

teaches. And now she’s seated on a bench
in a clearing feeding birds. Life crawls
up her arm. She remains silent—will break
no oath and no vow until you and I both
have agreed to give in to matters of love.

Eve & Adam

2011-08-22T11:50:00.000+02:00

This is a reading of this poem because
this poem yearns to be read. Read me,
it whispers to girls passing with clay-pots
on their heads, bangles on wrists. Monica read it
to Bill, pausing between lines for this poem
to breathe, the way Camilla kissed Charles
with her tongue when this poem revealed itself
to her. This poem was barred from Poems
on the Underground as a result. What's
more, it is read by women whose husbands
have fallen to cancer, their voices trailing the lines
like sound behind light, or mechanical waves
chasing photons, or the sound of an airplane
you can no longer see. Our neighbour
kept singing this poem every day,
till the moon of her mind moved and left
her window, and she lay in the arms
of a gentleman's kindness again. Eve read it
to Adam on the eve of their ban. Suddenly
aware of the lock and key structure of pussy
and cock, he recited this poem back to her,
spat in his hand and rubbed her crotch,
and hand in hand they laughed and left
the garden by the main gates, kissing.

Sesotho Cipher (@ Africa is a Country)

2011-07-21T16:44:00.001+02:00

Before moving down from Maseru to Cape Town in 2008 and exploring the Cape's hip hop scene, Core Wreckah was already heavily involved in Lesotho's capital hip hop scene. When we saw him plugging his new song 'Reverb' here and there on the web, we thought it a good moment to throw him 5 questions about what both scenes have in common, and what sets them apart. But more about that plugging after the song.
[Continue there (song to listen to): Sesotho Cipher]

Thw Conduit Show with Geoffrey Philp (author) AND Laury Webb (musician)

2011-07-20T13:40:00.000+02:00

Happy birthday, Nelson Mandela!

2011-07-18T07:32:00.001+02:00

NB: The following is only part of what Nelson Mandela said in his defense in 1964, when he was being tried for treason in South-Africa, and going to be, as everyone had thought, sentenced to death. It is only the last bit of that speech. Read all of it at this site. The rest is history (I couldn't help saying that).

"The Government often answers its critics by saying that Africans in South Africa are economically better off than the inhabitants of the other countries in Africa. I do not know whether this statement is true and doubt whether any comparison can be made without having regard to the cost-of-living index in such countries. But even if it is true, as far as the African people are concerned it is irrelevant. Our complaint is not that we are poor by comparison with people in other countries, but that we are poor by comparison with the white people in our own country, and that we are prevented by legislation from altering this imbalance.

The lack of human dignity experienced by Africans is the direct result of the policy of white supremacy. White supremacy implies black inferiority. Legislation designed to preserve white supremacy entrenches this notion. Menial tasks in South Africa are invariably performed by Africans. When anything has to be carried or cleaned the white man will look around for an African to do it for him, whether the African is employed by him or not. Because of this sort of attitude, whites tend to regard Africans as a separate breed. They do not look upon them as people with families of their own; they do not realize that they have emotions - that they fall in love like white people do; that they want to be with their wives and children like white people want to be with theirs; that they want to earn enough money to support their families properly, to feed and clothe them and send them to school. And what 'house-boy' or 'garden-boy' or laborer can ever hope to do this?

Pass laws, which to the Africans are among the most hated bits of legislation in South Africa, render any African liable to police surveillance at any time. I doubt whether there is a single African male in South Africa who has not at some stage had a brush with the police over his pass. Hundreds and thousands of Africans are thrown into jail each year under pass laws. Even worse than this is the fact that pass laws keep husband and wife apart and lead to the breakdown of family life.

Poverty and the breakdown of family life have secondary effects. Children wander about the streets of the townships because they have no schools to go to, or no money to enable them to go to school, or no parents at home to see that they go to school, because both parents (if there be two) have to work to keep the family alive. This leads to a breakdown in moral standards, to an alarming rise in illegitimacy, and to growing violence which erupts not only politically, but everywhere. Life in the townships is dangerous. There is not a day that goes by without somebody being stabbed or assaulted. And violence is carried out of the townships in the white living areas. People are afraid to walk alone in the streets after dark. Housebreakings and robberies are increasing, despite the fact that the death sentence can now be imposed for such offences. Death sentences cannot cure the festering sore.

Africans want to be paid a living wage. Africans want to perform work which they are capable of doing, and not work which the Government declares them to be capable of. Africans want to be allowed to live where they obtain work, and not be endorsed out of an area because they were not born there. Africans want to be allowed to own land in places where they work, and not to be obliged to live in rented houses which they can never call their own. Africans want to be part of the general population, and not confined to living in their own ghettoes. African men want to have their wives and children to live with them where they work, and not be forced into an unnatural existence in men's hostels. African women want to be with their menfolk and not be left permanently widowed in the Reserves. Africans want to be allowed out after eleven o'clock at night and not to be confined to their rooms like little children. Africans want to be allowed to travel in their own country and to seek work where they want to and not where the Labor Bureau tells them to. Africans want a just share in the whole of South Africa; they want security and a stake in society.

Above all, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy.

But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division, based on color, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one color group by another. The ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs it will not change that policy.

This then is what the ANC is fighting. Their struggle is a truly national one. It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live.

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
~Nelson Mandela - April 20, 1964

Post-note: On June 11, 1964, at the conclusion of the trial, Mandela was found guilty on four charges of sabotage and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He began his sentence in the notorious Robben Island Prison, a maximum security prison on a small island off the coast near Cape Town. A worldwide campaign to free Mandela began in the 1980s and resulted in his release on February 11, 1990, at age 71, after 27 years in prison. In 1993, Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize with South Africa's President F.W. de Klerk for their peaceful efforts to bring a non-racial democracy to South Africa. Black South Africans voted for the first time in the 1994 election that brought Mandela the presidency of South Africa.

Tlhokomeliso
"If needs be, it is an ideal
for which I am prepared to die."
~ ntate Mandela

Before the naming rites,
before we were free to be free
from terror in our ranks,
before prison and death
became our constitutional rights,
a cry echoed among the elements
to shake the tenements
inside heaven and inside hell;
flesh came into my shell,
resided in me, heavy or light
according to the moment—
god and politics entered
me; and so I say to you,
destroy me, for there's a part of me
that belongs, and will not acquiesce;
for your sake and that of your progeny,
slay, before it's too late,
the part in me that is earth's
and will not succumb. Come
to me, O men of truth,
my people and I wait for you.

Mega-death

2011-07-16T21:00:00.000+02:00

"Marcus and the Amazons", by Geoffrey Philp

2011-07-01T10:23:00.000+02:00

Jennifer and Amy at the beginning of the adventure

I could hang tens of other names on the character of Marcus, in Geoffrey Philp's book, Marcus and the Amazons, but Marcus is perhaps the better fit after all. He reminds me of people that have in some way or another crossed and influenced my life, in Africa and on every other continent. If my children have not lived through what people of my generation lived through, I'd be happy if they lived through this book.

In that respect, Marcus and the Amazons has a dose of everything for all of us. I relate to it as an adult and identify with the characters, yet it is no historical account but a well-crafted fictional account of "folks" living their lives, in their town (colony) and countryside whose scenery is painted (in words as well as in visual imagery) enough to appeal to all, grown-up and child.

Marcus and the Amazons makes me feel right and (yes) triumphant in its ability to portray characters and events which, as I have said, ring true to life. Here's an example. When I went to the USA I was a young man just exiled from Lesotho and having just tasted South Africa's apartheid jails under the then Pass Law system. I was a young political mind with clear ideas and a budding desire to end injustice in the world.

A few years later, I was ashamed to find myself considering whether freedom fighters in Southern Africa were or were not terrorists. The media in America had worked on my subconscious and made me wonder about one of my strongest convictions: South Africans had done everything possible for peaceful change in the region, to no avail, and therefore the only channels left were sabotage and the militarisation of the population.

I was Clarence, then, and if the propaganda machine had been consistent, deliberate and targeted, I could have possibly folded and gone over to the "enemy". Just like Clarence. And that's why Marcus and the Amazons is important. The sort of thing Geoffrey recounts has, is, and will happen as long as man is man and greed is greed.

As a scientifically minded individual who did his Independent Study on insects, it was an extra treat to read of the cooperation among Marcus and his family and friends, and their societal behaviour which includes division of labour, the ability to find solutions to complex situations, and the ability to communicate (using pheromones), qualities which as a result make them the most successful family in the animal kingdom. The Formicidae family.

Many thanks go to Geoffrey for this work and for the feeling that drives him to keep giving us meaningful words. And to Patrick Pollack who has done a marvellous job of bringing the ants and the background of the story to the fore. Geoffrey Philp blogs over at Geoffrey Philp's blogspot.

Soweto '76

2011-06-16T06:37:00.001+02:00

I was fifteen, but I remember the events of 16 June 1976 like it was last week. Black kids rose against the Apartheid state in South Africa, and refused Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in schools. They stamped their collective foot and said "No!" And their cry shook the world. Police opened fire and the first kid to go down was Hector Pieterson. I know you've seen the now famous picture of his limp body in the hands of Mbuyisa Makhubo, his sister running alongside them.

"I saw that he was bad, but I thought that he was just wounded, you know," remembers Hector's sister, Antoinette Sithole. [source]

There were to be many victims that day. Hector's photo was plastered on the conscience of the world (though few did anything about it), but there weren't enough photographers to ~~shoot~~ take pictures of the other victims. Hastings Ndlovu was another such victim, and it is said he may have even died before Hector. Here's the story of his death.

Klein was dumbstruck as to how a school child, in the middle of the morning, was being admitted to Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital with gunshot wounds, and questions raced through his mind.

"Children with bullet wounds?" he wondered. "But how? And by whom? A robbery? By school kids? In the middle of the day? Where would the guns come from? Black South Africans are prohibited from owning guns."

The answer came: "They were shot by the police."

Klein says a quick survey in the casualty ward revealed that all except one child were shot above the waist: in other words, the police had shot to kill. Then his old high school friend and a neurosurgeon, Dr Risik Gopal, arrived and checked Hastings' condition.

Gopal confirmed what Klein had suspected: no one could survive such an injury. And indeed, a "short time later, Hastings was dead", having been in a coma from the moment he was shot, Klein says.

Klein worked in Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital for several years, and had been warned that it would be a "baptism in blood" - particularly on Friday nights. But after years of handling "grisly injuries" from assaults using a range of weapons, he thought "nothing could penetrate the emotional barriers I had learned to erect".

Not that day.

The sight of "uniformed children riddled with bullets", accompanied by their "terminal breaths", left Klein feeling helpless and hopeless, and he could only watch in despair as life ebbed from the "fragile frame" of Ndlovu.

The white hospital administrator walked into the ward and Klein told him to expect trouble that night in Soweto. The administrator replied: "Oh, no, by tonight everything will have blown over."

Klein, a coloured doctor who under apartheid ethos had no authority to shout at a white person, couldn't contain himself. He yelled: "In Soweto, you do not shoot children and get away with it. There is going to be shit!" He walked away with tears in his eyes.

Klein had to break the news of Ndlovu's death to the boy's friends and relatives, a difficult task not made easier by repeating the news to other relatives of dead children. "I remember the looks of disbelief, the anguish, the tears. And I remember my own grief welling up afresh each time I delivered the grim news."

Gopal, now the chief neurosurgeon at the hospital, said they stood at the window and watched police shooting children. Some of the staff members saw their own children being brought in with gunshot wounds. "There was a lot of emotion on the day. It was just chaos," he says.

By late afternoon the government had prohibited blacks from assembling in groups larger than three. Workers, when they disembarked from trains and taxis, got together before walking home, wondering what was happening, unaware of the ruling.

Police opened fire on them, expecting them to know about the prohibition, and they arrived at hospital asking innocently why the police were shooting at them.

Others arrived at hospital with strange wounds, says Klein: small entrance holes in their upper bodies, with larger exit wounds lower down. One man said: "We were sitting in our kitchen, having dinner, when bullets came in through the roof and hit us." Police were firing from helicopters overhead. [source]

The purpose of this post is of course to remember these children's sacrifice. I remember the personal friends I made after refugees started flowing into Lesotho from all over South Africa. I remember how we would gather round and sing freedom songs in the evenings, how knowing them made us better politicians at that young age (I was fifteen). I remember how we'd listen to Radio Freedom being broadcast from Tanzania by the African National Congress. I remember how the sound sucked because the Apartheid government was doing its best to kill the signal.

I remember.

The other purpose of this post is to warn us about being inactive in the face of grave injustices. After 1976 and what it brought to South Africa, you'd think the world would do something. You'd be wrong. You think the world might do something for Darfur today? Wrong again. Mention a calamity in the world and ask yourself if the world might intervene, and you'd be wrong to think it might. But America did intervene in Iraq (not in Darfur). Find the error. Did America intervene in South Africa with

the mere existence of Apartheid
laws such as The Immorality Act of 1950, which stated that no one could make love to anyone outside of his or her race
Nelson Mandela and many other leaders in prison
the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960
the Soweto uprisings of 1976
the fact that more than 3 million blacks were forcibly removed from their homes and resettled in black 'homelands'.
the gruesome killing of Steve Biko in 1977
the killing of Ruth First, wife of Joe Slovo, by means of a parcel bomb
and many other injustices carried out against a whole people because of the activity of melanocytes in their skin

So, how did the world react? How did the big Occidental powers react? This is part of what happened: "[Chester] Crocker attracted the attention of the Reagan transition team with an article he wrote in the winter 1980/81 edition of the Foreign Affairs journal. In the article, Crocker was highly critical of the outgoing Carter administration for its apparent hostility to the white minority government in South Africa, by acquiescing in the United Nations Security Council's imposition of a mandatory arms embargo (UNSCR 418/77) and the UN's demand for the end of South Africa's illegal occupation of Namibia (UNSCR 435/78). [source]" That's what happened. The Reagan administration went on to apply and implement its policy of Constructive Engagement.

Let us remember this day with a particular thought for those who died; let us remember it also with a particular thought at preventing it from happening ~~in the future~~ now. So, whatchu gon' do?

Nkosi, sikelel'i Afrika

Happy Birthday, Gwendolyn Brooks!

2011-06-07T21:22:00.002+02:00

"The Mother", by Gwendolyn Brooks

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

From Wikipedia:
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.

[She was born] in Topeka, Kansas, to David Anderson Brooks and Keziah Wims, their first child. Her mother was a former school teacher who left teaching for marriage and motherhood, and her father, the son of a runaway slave who fought in the Civil War, had given up his ambition to become a doctor to work as a janitor because he could not afford to attend medical school. When Brooks was only six weeks old, her family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she grew up. She went by the nickname, "Gwendie," which her close friends called her.

Her home life was stable and loving, although she encountered racial prejudice in her neighborhood and in her schools. She attended Hyde Park High School, the leading white high school in the city, before transferring to all-black Wendell Phillips. Brooks eventually attended an integrated school, Englewood High School. In 1936, she graduated from Wilson Junior College. These four schools gave her a perspective on racial dynamics in the city that continued to influence her work.

Her enthusiasm for reading and writing was encouraged by her parents. Her father provided a desk and bookshelves, and her mother took her, when she was in high school, to meet Harlem Renaissance poets Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson.
[source...]

Happy birthday, Ms Giovanni!

2011-06-07T00:54:00.001+02:00

Nikki Giovanni was born today in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1943. I went to school in Maryville, a few kilometres from Knoxville. Wikipedia says that "on April 17, 2007, at the Virginia Tech Convocation commemorating the April 16 Virginia Tech massacre, Giovanni closed the ceremony with a chant poem, intoning:

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on. We are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech... We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibilities, we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness, we are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail, we will prevail. We are Virginia Tech."

"Giovanni's writing has been heavily inspired by African American activists and artists. She has a tattoo with the words 'Thug life' to honor Tupac Shakur, whom she admired. Her book 'Love Poems' (1997) was written in memory of him, and she has stated that she would 'rather be with the thugs than the people who are complaining about them.' She also tours nationwide and frequently speaks out against hate-motivated violence. At a 1999 Martin Luther King Day event, she recalled the 1998 murders of James Byrd, Jr. and Matthew Shepard: 'What's the difference between dragging a black man behind a truck in Jasper, Texas, and beating a white boy to death in Wyoming because he's gay?'"
[source...]

When I Die

when i die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries
and if they cry i hope their eyes fall out
and a million maggots that had made up their brains
crawl from the empty holes and devour the flesh
that covered the evil that passed itself off as a person
that i probably tried
to love.
__________

Pindrop Press and "Things That Are Silent"

2011-05-31T12:19:00.001+02:00

Rethabile is a Mosotho poet who enjoys reading and writing. He lives in Paris, France, with his wife and two children. Rethabile is self-employed and works in language-teaching. He says he has been writing for a good while, learning through trial and error and picking up lots of sounds by reading and re-reading the poems that he likes. His work has been published in various magazines and online.

Rethabile was born in 1961 in Lesotho and left his country with his parents and siblings to go into exile in 1980. He moved through The Republic of South Africa (very short stay, on account of the weight of Apartheid), Kenya and The United States of America, before settling in France in 1987.

He blogs at Poéfrika and co-edits the literary magazine Canopic Jar.

From Things that are Silent:

Janice’s Poem
When you get there, the horses of dawn
before you, the furious wheels of drawn carts,
each distance hard-won with sweated salt,
the road flat between miles; tense; only hoof
and sound of wheel loud above the air,
proof that this is not just a bad dream,
who can say what’s best to do for our calm?
You sit like sculpted ivory among jaded colours,
something in the face you wear, hung like a mask
on walls of inner rooms, something in the sound
whose echo names you, the morning of which
rose out from the gold of you, flaring nostrils
at the world. How can we say who is to blame?
Halfway into destiny, the sun lost all hope,
and shone into itself across the great Smokies.
A slow descent home. The accurate death
of the first words ever spoken: let there be light.
What do we know about the meanings
of things that work against that kind of light?

Visit Pindrop Press

Poéfrika honoured: "Top Lyrical Poetry Blogs"

2011-05-27T10:42:00.000+02:00

OnlineEnglishDegree.com

White Privilege II

2011-05-23T14:55:00.009+02:00

I was researching White Privilege when I fell on a post I had to answer. This is what it said:

One cannot be a vocal advocate of Southern heritage and culture without encountering the topic of race on a regular basis. It shouldn't be that way but it is, so it must be confronted head-on.

[Rethabile: I agree with you. But just a small point, White Privilege is not only in the South. It is in the North, East, Centre and West, too.]
_____

I have been reading recently about the concept of White Privilege – what our accusers define as an unearned, unmerited advantage that Whites have over other races. To that I answer, "Guilty As Charged."

[Rethabile: I agree with you on this, too. Except the fact that we're not accusing, but stating the obvious.]
_____

Let's look at this White Privilege that gives me an "unfair" advantage over others:

[Rethabile: The inverted commas around the word unfair suggest you think the accusation (which it isn't, but is a statement of fact) is unfair. I disagree with you here. White people have most of their advantages because they're white. Full-stop. It is not inherent in them, as it is not inherent in any homo sapiens. But the system bestows it upon them. Are you going to tell me that white dogs have inherent qualities in them that are superior to dogs of other colours?]
_____

I have the privilege of being raised by both my mother and my father in a stable home where drugs, alcohol, and crime never intruded.

[Rethabile: You mean "introduced". So was I. So were many people of colour. Let's scrap this item because it is moot. It seems to suggest that there are no white, single-parent homes and that there are no white drug addicts or alcoholics. Or no white criminals. Trust me, children from such white homes will get a better shot at life than children from hard-working, respeactable black homes. Trust me. Do you realise that the skies would have fallen on us and fire burned every living thing from here to Timbuktu if DSK were black?]
_____

I have the privilege of being raised by parents who understood the value of education and insisted that I and my siblings take learning seriously.

[Rethabile: So was I. I went to primary school, high school and university (in America), where I excelled in studies and sports. I studied biology and chemistry satisfactorily. I now am immersed in poetry, and do recognise the need to apply myself in order to succeed. So I suggest we scrap this item, too. Like the previous item, it seems to suggest that by virtue of your whiteness you are more studious and more entrepreneurial. That is wrong and untrue.]
_____

I have the privilege of being taught at an early age that making sacrifices today in order to have something better tomorrow is one of the keys to progress.

[Rethabile: Ditto. I hope we're not gonna have to scrap every item on your list, because that would doom your whole argument.]
_____

I have the privilege of having grandparents who taught my parents these same values – and generation upon generation before them.

[Ditto. Why do you think my grandparents and/or my parents didn't instil in me these same values?]
_____

I have the privilege of learning about the Western European culture – the music, the literature, the science, the art – that has enriched the lives of all who care to take advantage of that culture; freely bestowed on all who care for the finer things of mankind.

[Rethabile: Aha! You seem to be saying that Western/Occidental culture is superior. Now, we could go on talking about this, but all cultures are equal. My culture is equal to yours. But you do not have to make your living in my culture. I can assure you it would be uphill for you. Your culture -- what is your culture, by the way? Italian? British? Polish? German? Japanese? Chinese? Senegalese? Jamaican? Haitian? Eskimo? Cherokee? Nigerian? All have contributed to what you glibly call Western culture, as it has contributed to other cultures. I do not want to belabour the point. I'll leave you to explain what exactly it is you wanted to say here. The music, the literature, the science, the art, all are universal, for crying out loud. Picasso was a copier of African art. The blues is African music at the heart. Science was and is being advanced by all people of the world. Persian and Arabic and African science were flourishing when Europe was in the dark ages. What has enriched you has enriched me. But again, at the job interview, you go first. Why?]
_____

I have the privilege of having a strong work ethic instilled in me from a young age.

[Rethabile: I have that privilege, too, as do many other people from sunny countries and every other country in the world. What in the world makes you think only you have it?]
_____

I have the privilege of being raised in a Christian home and taught about the wholly undeserved love of a God who would sacrifice His only Son to pay for my sins.

[Rethabile: I was raised a Christian, too. My father was a high officer in the Presbyterian synod of our church, and he sat in committees ranging from The Christian Council of Lesotho through All Africa Conference of Churches to the World Council of Churches. My mother sang in the church choir. But on my résumé it doesn't say that, and I doubt it does on yours, either. And if it did on both, you'd still get the job, you'd still not be patted down for no reason, you'd still benefit from White Privilege. Wait a minute, do you think Jesus was white? I bet you do! Do you think Osama bin Laden was an A-hole because he wasn't white? I bet you do.]
_____

All these privileges were given to me, completely undeserved and unearned. They were given to me by the generations that came before me because they put the best interest of their children above all else. If other races or other groups of people choose to live for their own immediate gratification with little thought for the fate of their descendants, then that is their choice. It is my fondest hope – and expectation – that one day my grandchildren, when accused of White Privilege, will proudly proclaim "Guilty As Charged".

[Rethabile: They were given to me, too, but not that last step of not being accused first of a crime because I was in the vicinity, of not being lynched, of not being granted a livelihood because my melanocytes are more active, of not being required to bear a "Christian name" in order to fit in, of not being left alone, inconspicuous and free to pursue my dreams, my education, my aspirations, free to be the president of the United States without being harassed about my birth certificate (by the likes of Trump and Palin), my grades, despite my successes in a prestigious college of your making, of not being called the Anti-Christ, a communist, a socialist, a monkey, these privileges were not given to me. These were given to you. And that is what White privilege is. You did not deserve them but for the colour of your skin. You would not have gotten them had you been dark like me.]
_____

The day you empty your
Ethnographic museums
And send our souls back
To our homeland
Then we will know
You are for real
Mother-fucker.
~Lefifi Tladi

_____
Here ("The treatment of the slaves, on the whole, was good and indulgent") I rest my case, and admit I wasted my time on you.

White Privilege

2011-05-23T00:47:00.006+02:00

The life successes of people of color (and to a lesser degree some women) are always questionable and suspect when viewed through the gaze of Whiteness (and sexism).
The natural order of things equates being White and male with having natural authority and ability.
Whiteness equals authority.
Whiteness is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Whiteness is also the freedom to be utterly unreflective regarding the foolishness and madness of one's deeds and statements as long as the target of such madness is the Other.
White privilege is freedom from accountability.
The Obama birth certificate debacle has exposed how to be truly American a person must be White. Whiteness still imagines African Americans and other people of color as semi-permanent outsiders.
White privilege is the ability to be "normal" and "invisible." Whiteness is never interrogated.
Whiteness is the default position for viewing the world. It is a cognitive map and means of processing reality.
Whiteness is the ability and power to reframe reality. Despite whatever documents or evidence that President Obama may offer to silence the growly, rabid hostility of the Birthers and the White Conservative Soul, the terrain for debate will be continually shifted.
Despite our protests and the evidence that black and brown folks may bring to the table, racism does not exist until good White folks say that it does.

__________
This is a summary of this blogpost: Birthers and White Privilege. Please visit the blog and read the full post.

For me, White privilege is when the cashier asks me, a black man, for ID, but does not ask my white wife. We had decided to buy the same things and use the same means of payment at the same till (All on purpose, to prove a point. She asked to see the manager and had it out with him).

White privilege is when I get repeatedly asked in a supermarket where the potatoes (or the onions) are, but probably never any white folks.

White privilege is when I get singled out for a pat-down in the Paris underground, but rarely any white folks.

White privilege is when Marine LePen's party is a serious contender in France, despite the number of âneries it says, when any black canditate has never been a serious contender whatever they say. On the other side of the pond, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin fill that slot.

White privilege is your building's land-lady never accusing you of damaging the lift the day you move in, and realising afterwards that the damage was old, not new.

White privilege is never being asked where you are from (followed by, No, I mean originally).

White privilege is never having ladies switch their handbag to the other side of where you're going to pass them,

or getting door-locks slammed down at the pedestrian crossing when you cross,

or getting asked what tribe you belong to when you say you're from Africa,

or getting asked for your English name when you reply Rethabile (which is as bad asking for someone's Christian name. What the hell is that?).

White privilege is being free to say someone is playing the race card without knowing the details of their experience.

White privilege is having a god you're grown up worshipping cast in your own colour, despite historical and biblical leanings to the contrary. Which is why I started wondering about religious proclamations in general (if they can lie about what is so evidently untrue, what else have they been lying about?)

White privilege is what white people benefit from in societies across the globe, even in places where they're the numerical minority (which is due to the legacy of colonialism and the system of slavery and Jim Crow laws).

One Boy Told Me

2011-05-21T00:42:00.000+02:00

LINK: One Boy Told Me : Poetry Everywhere : Video : The Poetry Foundation
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Happy birthday, Malcolm X!

2011-05-19T00:02:00.000+02:00

For Malcolm X

All you violated ones with gentle hearts;
You violent dreamers whose cries shout heartbreak;
Whose voices echo clamors of our cool capers,
And whose black faces have hollowed pits for eyes.
All you gambling sons and hooked children and bowery bums
Hating white devils and black bourgeoisie,
Thumbing your noses at your burning red suns,
Gather round this coffin and mourn your dying swan.

Snow-white moslem head-dress around a dead black face!
Beautiful were your sand-papering words against our skins!
Our blood and water pour from your flowing wounds.
You have cut open our breasts and dug scalpels in our brain
When and Where will another come to take your holy place?
Old man mumbling in his dotage, or crying child, unborn?
© Margaret Abigail Walker

Malcolm X was born on 19 May 1925. Happy birthday to him.

Happy birthday, Stevie Wonder!

2011-05-13T20:06:00.001+02:00

Stevie Wonder - So What the Fuss par val6210

Happy birthday, Mazisi Kunene!

2011-05-11T22:16:00.000+02:00

Mazisi Raymond Kunene was born in Durban, South Africa, in 1930 [12th of May]. He graduated from the University of Natal with a paper on traditional and modern Zulu poetry. In 1959 he obtained a grant to complete his doctoral dissertation in London.

From this point on Kunene dedicated himself to the struggle for freedom of African countries. He worked for institutions such as the Afro-Asian Writers Committee and founded the South African Vocational Programme for refugees in Tanzania and Zambia.

In 1966 he was officially banned from his home country along with 45 other authors. He was one of the founding members of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and became Chief Representative for the African National Congress in Europe and USA in 1962.

Kunene received support from notables such as Picasso, Chagall, Giacometti, Moore and Rauschenberg when he established the South African Exhibition Appeal in 1972.
[more...]

Was I wrong

Was I wrong when I thought
All shall be avenged?
Was I wrong when I thought
The rope of iron holding the neck of young bulls
Shall be avenged?
Was I wrong
When I thought the orphans of sulphur
Shall rise from the ocean?
Was I depraved when I thought there need not be love,
There need not be forgiveness, there need not be progress,
There need not be goodness on the earth,
There need not be towns of skeletons,
Sending messages of elephants to the moon?
Was I wrong to laugh asphyxiated ecstasy
When the sea rose like quicklime
When the ashes on ashes were blown by the wind
When the infant sword was left alone on the hill top?
Was I wrong to erect monuments of blood?
Was I wrong to avenge the pillage of Caesar?
Was I wrong? Was I wrong?
Was I wrong to ignite the earth
And dance above the stars
Watching Europe burn with its civilisation of fire,
Watching America disintegrate with its gods of steel,
Watching the persecutors of mankind turn into dust
Was I wrong? Was I wrong?
© Mazisi Kunene
[source...]

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Happy Birthday, Kamau Brathwaite!

2011-05-11T00:03:00.002+02:00

One of the most vivid and telling images I've heard in a long time is by Kamau Brathwaite in 21 days, when he says:

on the first day
of yr death it is quiet it is dormant like a doormat
no one-foot touch its welcome. its dust on the floor
is not disturb nor are the sleeping spirits of this house

Read the rest: 21 days

Happy Birthday, Yusef

2011-04-29T00:03:00.000+02:00

"Yusef Komunyakaa knows the texture of sound and the multitude of instruments contained in a single voice. He first heard jazz on his wooden radio in 1950s Louisiana: Louis Armstrong’s trumpet, a Dinah Washington ballad. Then came the cadence of the Bible and gospel music, then Shakespeare, then the modernist poets. "Song lyrics brought me to the power of words," he explained in an interview with Poets.org, "the songs taught me to listen." Komunyakaa believes that we internalize the music and rhythms around us, and everything we say or write is "filtered" through that musical memory.

His poems are rich with musical imagery: songs sung in fields, jazz playing on jukeboxes, and wounded musicians struggling for redemption. And yet, there is also breathing room, a space for silence. In his poem "Rhythm Method," he writes about the process of discerning the rhythm of the heart from the variety of sounds in the natural world:

We know the whole weight
depends on small silences
we fit ourselves into.

Music provides Komunyakaa with a means to explore complex issues of race and human relationships, while never reducing it through an attempt to reproduce the sounds themselves. "I gave myself a line of instruction a few years ago: 'I am not a horn,'" he explained. "It troubles me when poetry tries to equal music through outlandish mimicry of musical instruments. It is not music or poetry."
www.poets.org

Yusef reads:
"My father's Love Letters"
"Ode to the Maggot"
"Thanks"

Yusef was born on 29 April 1947. Happy birthday to him.

In answer to, "What's poetry?":
"Poetry is a kind of distilled insinuation. It’s a way of expanding and talking around an idea or a question. Sometimes, more actually gets said through such a technique than a full frontal assault."
www.english.uiuc.edu

Jasmine

I sit beside two women, kitty-corner
to the stage, as Elvin's sticks blur
the club into a blue fantasia.
I thought my body had forgotten the Deep
South, how I'd cross the street
if a woman like these two walked
towards me, as if a cat traversed
my path beneath the evening star.
Which one is wearing jasmine?
If my grandmothers saw me now
they'd say, Boy, the devil never sleeps.
My mind is lost among November
cotton flowers, a soft rain on my face
as Richard Davis plucks the fat notes
of chance on his upright
leaning into the future.
The blonde, the brunette--
which one is scented with jasmine?
I can hear Duke in the right hand
& Basic in the left
as the young piano player
nudges us into the past.
The trumpet's almost kissed
by enough pain. Give him a few more years,
a few more ghosts to embrace--Clifford's
shadow on the edge of the stage.
The sign says, No Talking.
Elvin's guardian angel lingers
at the top of the stairs,
counting each drop of sweat
paid in tribute. The blonde
has her eyes closed, & the brunette
is looking at me. Our bodies
sway to each riff, the jasmine
rising from a valley somewhere
in Egypt, a white moon
opening countless false mouths
of laughter. The midnight
gatherers are boys & girls
with the headlights of trucks
aimed at their backs, because
their small hands refuse to wound
the knowing scent hidden in each bloom.
© Yusef Komunyakaa

Edward Byrne on "Jasmine": http://edwardbyrne.blogspot.com/2009/08/count-basie-and-yusef-komunyakaa.html

Link to this poem:

Tags:
African-American Poetry, Jazz Poetry

"4 Women" (Nina Simone song)

2011-04-25T00:24:00.002+02:00

Cantelowes (Toumani Diabate)

2011-04-24T00:34:00.001+02:00

"Bluebird," by Charles Bukowski

2011-04-23T00:52:00.001+02:00

Animated "The Language" (Robert Creeley's poem)

2011-04-22T00:24:00.000+02:00

Animated "Forgetfulness" (Billy Collins's poem)

2011-04-20T00:27:00.000+02:00

Happy birthday, Etheridge Knight!

2011-04-19T02:25:00.002+02:00

The Idea Of Ancestry

1
Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black
faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grand-
fathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins (1st and 2nd), nieces, and nephews. They stare
across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know
their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style,
they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me;
they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.
I have at one time or another been in love with my mother,
1 grandmother, 2 sisters, 2 aunts (1 went to the asylum),
and 5 cousins. I am now in love with a 7-yr-old niece
(she sends me letters in large block print, and
her picture is the only one that smiles at me).
I have the same name as 1 grandfather, 3 cousins, 3 nephews,
and 1 uncle. The uncle disappeared when he was 15, just took
off and caught a freight (they say). He's discussed each year
when the family has a reunion, he causes uneasiness in
the clan, he is an empty space. My father's mother, who is 93
and who keeps the Family Bible with everbody's birth dates
(and death dates) in it, always mentions him. There is no
place in her Bible for "whereabouts unknown."

2
Each fall the graves of my grandfathers call me, the brown
hills and red gullies of mississippi send out their electric
messages, galvanizing my genes. Last yr/like a salmon quitting
the cold ocean-leaping and bucking up his birth stream/I
hitchhiked my way from LA with 16 caps in my pocket and a
monkey on my back. And I almost kicked it with the kinfolks.
I walked barefooted in my grandmother's backyard/I smelled the
old
land and the woods/I sipped cornwhiskey from fruit jars with the
men/
I flirted with the women/I had a ball till the caps ran out
and my habit came down. That night I looked at my grandmother
and split/my guts were screaming for junk/but I was almost
contented/I had almost caught up with me.
(The next day in Memphis I cracked a croaker's crib for a fix.)
This yr there is a gray stone wall damming my stream, and when
the falling leaves stir my genes, I pace my cell or flop on my bunk
and stare at 47 black faces across the space. I am all of them,
they are all of me, I am me, they are thee, and I have no children
to float in the space between.
© Etheridge Knight

He would have been 80 today, the 19th of April. Happy birthday to him.
Other poems by Etheridge Knight on Poéfrika.

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Animated "Mulberry Fields" (Lucille Clifton's poem)

2011-04-19T00:18:00.003+02:00

Animated "Tornado Child" (Kwame Dawes's poem)

2011-04-18T00:02:00.003+02:00

Ntate Aimé Césaire died on 17 April, 2008

2011-04-17T00:05:00.002+02:00

So much blood in my memory!
In my memory are lagoons. They are covered with death’s-heads.
They are not covered with water lilies.
In my memory are lagoons. On their shores no women’s loincloths spread out.
My memory is encircled with blood. My memory has its belt of corpses!
© Aimé Césaire [*]

The Way You Make Me Feel

2011-04-15T00:21:00.004+02:00

----------

The old sharing with the young

The Kora Jazz Trio jammin'

2011-04-14T00:45:00.000+02:00

----------
Some links:
1. http://tinyurl.com/67h9u85 (videos)
2. http://tinyurl.com/6axoppo (on Amazon)
3. http://tinyurl.com/6g29umt (on Facebook)

Canopic Jar #26 is out!

2011-04-13T15:33:00.000+02:00

p o e t r y

brad.m.bucklin
charlotte.beard
colin.dardis
dana.guthrie.martin
danielle.boodoo-fortuné
daniel.gallik
doug.mcarty
jd nelson [from issue 15]
john.grey
jumoke.verissimo
kyle.hemmings
lee.stern
nic.sebastian
pam.mordecai
paul.hostovsky
rethabile.masilo
sergio.a.ortiz
----------

p r o s e

david greenberger [from issue 15]
eghosa.imasuen
gregg.willard
jack.frey
janet.yung
tom.sheehan
----------

v i s u a l a r t

mathew.staunton & philippe saltel
césar.biojo [from a previous issue]
dale short [from a previous issue]

"My Love (for Eudy Simelane)", by Musa Okwonga

2011-04-13T07:23:00.001+02:00

----------

To some people
My love is somewhat alien;
When he comes up, they start subject-changing, and
In some states he's seen as some contagion -
In those zones, he stays subterranean;
Some love my love; they run parades for him:
Liberal citizens lead the way for him:
Concurrent with some countries embracing him,
Whole faiths and nations seem ashamed of him:
Some tried banning him,
God-damning him,
Toe-tagging him,
Prayed that he stayed in the cabinet,
But my love kicked in the panelling, ran for it –
My love! Can't be trapping him in labyrinths! -
Maverick, my love is; thwarts challenges;
Cleverest geneticists can't fathom him,
Priests can't defeat him with venomous rhetoric;
They'd better quit; my love's too competitive:
Still here, despite the Taliban, Vatican,
And rap, ragga in their anger and arrogance,
Calling on my love with lit matches and paraffin -
Despite the fistfights and midnight batterings -
Despite the dislike by Anglican Africans
And sly comparisons with those mishandling
Small kids, and his morbid inner chattering
My love's still here and fiercely battling,
Parenting, marrying, somehow managing;
My love comes through anything.
----------

Read about Musa Okwonga:

Derek Walcott's "Sixty Years After"

2011-04-12T19:04:00.005+02:00

Link: Derek Walcott's poem, "Sixty Years After"

Vusi Mahlasela: "Woza"

2011-04-09T22:08:00.002+02:00

Happy Birthday, Maya Angelou!

2011-04-04T00:03:00.001+02:00

Maya Angelou was born on 4 April 1928, as Marguerite Johnson. She knows why the caged bird sings, and is only one of two American poets to write and read an inauguration poem for a president. The other one was Robert Frost for John Kennedy. Happy Birthday to Maya.

Maya has said,

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world's variety and uniqueness.
For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.
Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'
Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.
Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which comes right after being a natural heart surgeon.
We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.

She appears behind some links to the right, including with the masterpiece, "Still, I rise" as Poem of the Week #7. A short biography of Ms Angelou says, "Internationally respected poet, writer and educator, Maya Angelou has given us such best-selling titles as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin' and Swingin' and The Heart of a Woman. Multi-talented, she produced and starred in the great play Cabaret for Freedom and starred in The Blacks. She wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film Georgia, Georgia and was both author and executive producer of a five-part television miniseries, Three Way Choice.

Miss Angelou's accomplishments have earned her the La Home Journal Woman of the Year award in communication an Matrix Award in the field of books from Women in Communication She received the Golden Eagle Award for her documentary, Americans in the Arts, produced by PBS. She is one of the women admitted into the Director's Guild. In 1974, she was appointed by Gerald Ford to the Bi-Centennial Commission and later by Jimmy Carter to the Commission for International Woman of the Year.

Her personal outreach to improve conditions for women in the Third World, primarily in Africa, has helped change the lives of thousands less privileged [people]. Here is where she gives with all her heart and soul [Source]." And lastly, here is another of her poems:

Son to Mother

I start no
wars, raining poison
on cathedrals,
melting Stars of David
into golden faucets
to be lighted by lamps
shaded by human skin.

I set no
store on the strange lands,
send no
missionaries beyond my
borders,
to plunder secrets
and barter souls.

They
say you took my manhood,
Momma.
Come sit on my lap
and tell me,
what do you want me to say
to them, just
before I annihilate
their ignorance?
© Maya Angelou

Tags:
Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Still I Rise

Happy birthday, Hugh Masekela!

2011-04-04T00:02:00.000+02:00

Happy birthday, Marvin Gaye!

2011-04-02T12:35:00.000+02:00

Marvin Gaye was born on 2 April 1939. Happy Birthday to him.
© and photo credit: http://photo.sing365.com

Stephen calls him a silky soul singer, which I think is a darn good description. He was born Marvin Pentz Gay, but stuck an "E" to his surname to avoid misunderstandings. Remember I heard it through the grapevine? He followed that up with a string of successes like You're all I need to get by in 1968 with Tammy Terrell, What's going on? in 1971, Let's get it on in 1973:

"Let's Get It On" is a 1973 number-one single recorded by American soul singer Marvin Gaye for the Tamla (Motown) label. The title song of the album release of the same title, "Let's Get It On" held the number-one position on the Billboard Pop Singles chart for two non-consecutive weeks in September 1973. In its first time at number one, it replaced "Brother Louie" by Stories, and was replaced by "Delta Dawn" by Helen Reddy; it then replaced "Delta Dawn" and was finally replaced by "We're an American Band" by Grand Funk Railroad. Written by Marvin Gaye and Ed Townsend, and produced by Gaye, it was the most successful single ever released on a Motown label.
[source...]

After several other hits like Got to give it up, a funky dance groove, and Sexual healing, perhaps his most famous hit (partly for being the most recent in memory), Marvin descended into drugs and booze, and fears that someone was out to kill him. In 1983 he did a version of the Star-spangled banner, the American national anthem. He finally moved in with his parents and was shot dead by his preacher father on 1 April 1984, a day before his 45th birthday. He is sorely missed. Most of this information and more can be found on Wikipedia.

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"Living For The City," Ray Charles & Stevie Wonder

2011-03-26T19:47:00.000+01:00

----------
The young sharing with their elders.

"I Got a Woman," Stevie Wonder

2011-03-25T00:43:00.000+01:00

----------

The young "learning" from their elders.

"Hallelujah, I Just Love Her So," Stevie Wonder

2011-03-24T08:37:00.003+01:00

----------

The young "learning" from their elders.

"Tornado Child", by Kwame Dawes

2011-03-22T15:57:00.002+01:00

Watch the full episode. See more Poetry Everywhere.

sharpeville

2011-03-21T00:22:00.002+01:00

A half century ago, police officers massacred 69 black South Africans in the township of Sharpeville, where protesters had burned the passbooks that the white-led apartheid government required them to carry at all times.

But survivors of the massacre here are tired of telling their stories: They are wondering when the change they thought they were fighting for 50 years ago will come to Sharpeville.

Residents in recent weeks have set fire to tyres in the streets to protest the lack of basic services such as electricity and running water.

"Our lives started changing with Nelson Mandela's release, but people are still financially struggling and finance is still in white people's hands," said Abram Mofokeng, who was 21 when officers opened fire on the protesters, shooting demonstrators including women and children as they ran away. Mofokeng still bears the scar where a bullet entered his back.
[source...]

The Sharpeville police mowed protesters down, shooting most in the back. No accountability. Nobody to turn to, in South Africa or abroad. The heavens told black South-Africans they were alone. "You're alone." And so they were. Many fled into exile, and Lesotho started having its first waves of South-African refugees, mostly from the PAC movement, which had organised the protests.

We called them ma-PAC, the prefix signifying more than one, some, several, many. They played rugby at a football pitch in Motse-Mocha near the Setsoto stadium, a strange sport to us, 7 years old and staunch football players/fans. South Africa had just flipped the world a bird and got away with it. It would do so again in 1976 in a repeat performance that became Apartheid's last straw.

It's been a long time coming, but change is gonna come, sang Sam Cooke about America. He could have been singing about South Africa, or the world, even. For what is baffling is how Sharpeville 1960, Soweto 1976, King's and X's murders, the Civil Rights movement, Mandela's 27 years in jail, not to mention the thousands tortured and killed in South Africa, and tortured and lynched in America, what is baffling is how these have not entered the minds of all and instructed them on the evils of discrimination and segregation in all its forms. That is truly baffling to me.

It is also amazingly stunning that all these things happened and almost no one got punished for it, no international hunt for the wrong-doers, no motivation to see them "brought to justice," as George Bush the son would say about so many who had committed so less. Today is a day to remember and to know why it should be remembered, today is a learning day. To me it is also a bitter day.

Listen: "A Poem About Sharpeville"

What is important
about Sharpeville
is not that seventy died:
nor even that they were shot in the back
retreating, unarmed, defenseless
and certainly not
the heavy caliber slug
that tore through a mother’s back
and ripped through the child in her arms
killing it
Remember Sharpeville
bullet-in-the-back day
Because it epitomized oppression
and the nature of society
more clearly than anything else;
it was the classic event
Nowhere is racial dominance
more clearly defined
nowhere the will to oppress
more clearly demonstrated
what the world whispers
apartheid with snarling guns
the blood lust after
South Africa spills in the dust
Remember Sharpeville
Remember bullet-in-the-back day
And remember the unquenchable will for freedom
Remember the dead
and be glad.
© Dennis Brutus

The Bible On Sex And Marriage

2011-03-21T00:06:00.000+01:00

Ibrahim's "Mannenberg"

2011-03-19T00:16:00.002+01:00

If You Leave Me Now

2011-03-17T00:54:00.000+01:00

Pata-pata

2011-03-15T00:05:00.000+01:00

Happy birthday, Geoffrey!

2011-03-14T00:02:00.002+01:00

Geoffrey Philp has written a children's book, Grandpa Sydney's Anancy Stories, a novel, called Benjamin, My Son, books of short stories, Uncle Obadiah and the Alien as well as the more recent Who's Your Daddy, and five poetry collections, among them Exodus and Other Poems, Florida Bound, hurricane center, xango music, and Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas. Geoffrey blogs at http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com and teaches English at Miami Dade College.

He also teaches poetry to me and to his many readers, and I'm glad today to celebrate him, and wish him a happy day of birth. Happy birthday, ntate.

A few other links:

Warner Woman: Version
(For Edward Baugh)

She came, they say, wearing a dress as red
as the dirt of the countryside, and stood
at the crossroads of Matilda’s Corner
shaking her fists at the mansions
on the hills. “The Spirit descended on me
to speak these words to the nation,
for they have wandered in paths
that I have not taught them.
For I have heard the cries of widows
and orphans in the streets, but the wicked
who fear neither flood nor famine,
and have built their fortresses, their walled
communities and garrisons have said,
‘Who is there like us to judge us?’
But thus sayeth the Lord of Hosts,
‘Kingston, O Kingston, how I would have loved
to have gathered you to my bosom
the way the sea caresses the shore.
But you have preferred storm and hurricane.
So I say, woe to you for you have slaughtered
my children, the old, and the crippled.
Woe to you for you have stoned and exiled
my prophets. Woe to you for your have defrauded
the homeless and the poor.” Then she ripped
her dress in two, spat on the asphalt three times,
and then, ran like a horse without its rider,
back up to Long Mountain, up into the darkness
gathering around the tops of the trees
with the smell of rain around their roots.
© Geoffrey Philp

Amazing Grace

2011-03-13T00:34:00.001+01:00

JoAnn says I should go read "The Bell Curve".

2011-03-12T15:02:00.004+01:00

You, JoAnn, say: Africa's share of world trade is only 3% compared with over 7% in 1948. Most of that trade comes from South Africa and African oil and gas producers. Crude oil comprises more than half of Africa's exports. In two-thirds of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, one or two products account for at least 60% of the country’s total exports. Only 3 African countries are in the world's top 50 exports — South Africa (39th), Algeria (42nd) and Nigeria (43rd). Africa's share of global FDI is a mere 3%. South Africa and Nigeria account for 54% of Sub Saharan Africa's GDP. 45% of SSA's population live in extreme poverty (compared with 41% twenty years ago) — this is the highest of any continent. And a further 30% live in moderate poverty. Life expectancy in SSA is 47 compared with 69 for East Asia and 78 for developed countries.

According to surveys, African countries are the most difficult in the world in which to do business. Access to finance, infrastructure, institutions and skills are the most severe constraints cited by entrepreneurs. African countries have the highest levels of corruption. Africa has a large number of failed states. (Everything you say I quote from this comment)

Rethabile says: I'd like to rebut you with a "so?" -- or with Mr Tladi's poem, The Sophisticated Skinhead. Especially the last stanza. But no, I think I'll reply to you directly, although I know from the arguments you put forth to prove that I am stupider than you are (I'm guessing your tan isn't very groovy), that you haven't read the post you commented on, nor the other commenters' remarks.

You can bring as many statistics as you want, and I may even agree with many of them, it still doesn't prove that white people or yellow people are smarter than black people. Unfortunately for you, there's history, things have happened that have had a major influence on how the world's populations fare today.

You want me to read The Bell Curve? Guess what, I have. And apart from its logic being flawed and non-inclusive, it's a dumb book. I want you to go read any book by Naomi Klein; to go read any book by Tim Wise.

(Don't worry, they're both white).

A meteor was the "slavery--colonisation--jim.crow--unfair.trade.practices--you.name.it" of dinosaurs. Think about that for a moment. Africa has the largest number of failed states. Well, dinosaurs have the largest number of dead individuals, in fact just about all of them are dead. If you apply your argument to this fact, what does it mean? Dinosaurs had more of which hormone? A lesser brain than whom? Statistics? I'll give you statistics.

...a total of 16% of Americans accept real evolution—purposeless and unguided by God. That’s up from 9% in 1982, and may be a real trend. Still, it’s dispiriting to realize that fewer than one in six Americans accepts evolution in the way scientists accept it.(1)

The writer above goes on to say that "acceptance of evolution is positively correlated with level of education; here’s the table from the Gallup survey. Still, only one in four Americans with a postgraduate degree accepts real, unguided evolution". So, is that due to education and exposure, or to levels of testoterone in the blood? Here's another stat.

"About 1 in 4 Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half of Americans can name at least two members of the fictional cartoon family [The Simpsons], according to a survey.(2)

You have failed to ask yourself the fundamental question of why so few African countries are rich, but especially and more telling, why so many "developed" countries are. As a result, I refuse to address each of your statistics singly.

You say that "To some extent, Africa is the continent of lost hope. Most African countries seemed to be a much better starting position 50 years ago than the East Asian economies. While Asia exceeded all expectations, Africa dashed its hope. Biology is the great determiner of how or whether one orders one's life and delays gratification for greater, long-term gain."

Rethabile says: How much biology do you know? And is it from The Bell Curve? Or it is perhaps from de Gobineau, who "questioned the belief that the black and yellow races belong to the same human family as the white race and share a common ancestor"? (3). Reading your comment tells me you have nicked copiously from both Richard Herrnstein (author of The Bell Curve) and Arthur de Gobineau (crazy 19th century ~~scientist~~ quack). Here's some of what de Gobineau says, from link 3 above:

"[He] believed the white race was superior to the other races in the creation of civilized culture and maintaining ordered government. However, he also thought that the development of civilization in other periods was different than in his own and speculated that other races might have superior qualities in those civilization periods than in his own. Nonetheless, he believed European civilization represented the best of what remained of ancient civilizations and held the most superior attributes capable for continued survival. His primary thesis in regards to this theory was that European civilizational flowering from Greece to Rome and Germanic to contemporary sprang from, and corresponded to, the ancient Indo-European culture, also known as 'Aryan'."

You say: "IQ, testosterone and the sizes of the different parts of the brain, are genetic for the greatest part. Relatively low IQ and relatively high testosterone compel individuals to aggressive activity with little to no fore-planning. The different races are biologically different, and this includes IQ and internal chemistry (testosterone, etc.)."

Rethabile says: You have no idea how wrong you are. You just don't know what you're talking about. First off, I beg you to understand that I do not want my skin to be white. What I'm about to say is the plain truth. I'm happy being black, but any other colour, what difference would it make (except perhaps to enjoy better priviledges)?

You (if you're white, which you probably are) and I are the same. We are the same species. We are homo sapiens sapiens, come out of Africa eons ago. Our ancestors (yours and mine) include both Lucy and probably the Sahelanthropus tchadensis Toumaï. We are the same as a white pigeon and a grey one are the same. Black Africans have been shown to be closer genetically to white Europeans than to Australian aborigenes. Colour is superficial. A silver alsatian and a gold alsatian. A dapple-grey mustang (Equus ferus caballus) and a brown one. A red Volkswagen beetle and a pink one. I mean, what the hell are you talking about, JoAnn?

Genetics in fact proves the opposite of what you say (we're different). Genetics shows that people are the same all over the world. I do not know why anybody would expect the opposite.

Have you heard of stereotype threat?

You say: "Read the Bell Curve and check out 'IQ and the Wealth of Nations'."
Rethabile says: No, thank you. I've read one and I'm not interested in reading the other.

You say: "Caucasians do not have the highest, overall IQ of the three major races. Mongoloids (Asians) hold that claim. I postulate that the higher success of Caucasians versus the other races is due to their relatively higher average IQ’s in combination with a testosterone level higher than Mongoloids, and significantly lower than Negroes. This allows for a high level of fore-planning, and delayed gratification, and adequate, but not overpowering assertive/aggressiveness.

Rethabile says: IQ is another trap. And please stop using the word "races" so liberally. It implies that there are several human races. But the truth is that we're "the only living species in the Homo genus of bipedal primates in Hominidae, the great ape family" [source]. Now back to IQ.

IQ doesn't mean anything as to the intelligence of a human being per se. It means something as to the intelligence of a human being in a white, occidental, colonialist setting. OK, I got carried away, but there's ample reason. I meant to say "in an occidental setting." Put me in your environment and give me your tests, I'll do badly. I'd like to see you or your smartest white person in my black environment with my black tests.

Modern genetic studies, published as "The History and Geography of Human Genes" (Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza), divides humanity into four major ethnic regions, African (Khoisan), Caucasoids (Basque), Mongoloids (American Indian) and Australians (Aborigine) (Time, No. 3, 1995). With fossil evidence these recent findings confirm the African origin of humanity. Africans have the greatest genetic distance from the rest of humanity, showing that on the human family tree, the split from the Africans occurred before the other branches. Australian aborigines are genetically the most distant from the Africans.(4)

Rethabile says: Where does that leave your colour argument for the greater, whiter (or yellower) civilisation (except in tatters), JoAnn? But wait, let me quote somebody else, because I just know you read neither my original post nor the ensuing comments, a post you commented on. Here goes:

What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted by [sic] right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there (5).

The Click Song

2011-03-11T00:05:00.000+01:00

Where did the naughty little flea go?

2011-03-09T00:37:00.000+01:00

Zambesi Paen 1995

2011-03-07T00:10:00.005+01:00

mhembwe Shona word for 'duikers' (small antelopes)
Mwari Shona supreme god
vanhu Shona word for 'people'

Our old imported craft (Ah! but it knows
how to get through) insinuates its way
through driftwood logs their goggle eyes
(such legerdemain!) closed yes but still
waiting on time. Laden it ploughs past sleek-
skinned hippopotami who fan their fat
backsides claiming rights on this Grand River.
A snout submits a yellow yawn methodical
and wide. Why what sharp teeth you have! This from
some wit aboard. Nervy chuckles invade
luxuriant gallery forest green.
Everywhere else in this enormous stone
house Mwari's land is thirsty dry as bone.
Mhembwe perish in droves. Vanhu old and

young die as well but sovereign states
are sovereign and the price extorted by
an evil commonweal is fealty
or death. We reach and tie up at the dock
to rubberneck. There's nothing here but there
is everything. Leaves leap about the sky
strung by their tails. Moulting streams soar and flap
into the bush. Lianas dart tough tongues
to rope the heavens in lasso the clouds.
The trapped sky belches hawks but not a spit
of rain. On the bank frantic apes with eyes
perfect as wounds polished by worms extend
imploring arms in baleful port de bras
twirl wobbly pirouettes leap for leftovers flung

at water that laps still as before time.
"Once" says the guide "We all swam here, reptiles
and all. But now they take what falls in as
fair game." He smiles. We fail to grasp his wry
significance. The vessel turns downstream
towards torrents named after the tubby queen
that pour imperial gallons down a monumental scarp.
Headlong in the slim gorge next door
manic sauteurs bungee jump in
to plunder air all that's still left.
Trippers disgorging hurl bile on the waves;
gigantic haunches shrug the vomit off
as sacred crocodiles in camouflage
submerge and falcons roaming keep time in the sky.
© Pamela Mordecai 2010

----------

Pamela Claire Mordecai (born 1942 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a Jamaican writer, teacher, and scholar and poet. She attended high school in Jamaica and college in the USA, where she did a first degree in English. A trained language-arts teacher with a PhD in English, she has taught at secondary and tertiary levels, trained teachers, and worked in media and in publishing.

Mordecai has written articles on Caribbean literature, education and publishing, and has collaborated on, or herself written, over thirty books, including textbooks, children’s books, and four books of poetry for adults. She has edited several anthologies. Her poems and stories for children are widely known and have been used in textbooks in the UK, Canada, the USA, West Africa and the Caribbean. Her short stories have been published in journals and anthologies in the Caribbean, the USA and Canada.

Mordecai has lived in Toronto, Ontario, Canada since 1994, but the Caribbean experience continues to be the focus of her writing.
[source...]

----------

Other work by Pam here and elsewhere

Happy birthday, Miriam Makeba!

2011-03-04T07:11:00.001+01:00

Miriam Zenzi Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma and her father, who died when she was six, was a Xhosa. Her professional career began in the 1950s with the Manhattan Brothers, before she formed her own group, The Skylarks, singing a blend of jazz and traditional melodies of South Africa.

In 1959, she performed in the musical King Kong alongside Hugh Masekela, her future husband. Though she was a successful recording artist, she was only receiving a few dollars for each recording session and no provisional royalties, and was keen to go to the US. Her break came when she starred in the anti-Apartheid documentary Come Back, Africa in 1959. When the Italian government invited her to the premier of the film at the Venice Film Festival, she decided not to return home. Her South African passport was revoked shortly afterwards.

Makeba then travelled to London where she met Harry Belafonte, who assisted her in gaining entry to and fame in the United States. She released many of her most famous hits there including Pata Pata, The Click Song (Qongqothwane in Xhosa), and Malaika. In 1966, Makeba received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording together with Harry Belafonte for An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba. The album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under Apartheid
[more...].

What I personally remember of Miriam is the voice, and the way she was beloved. My folks listened to her at the same time as they listened to Jim Reeves (go figure), and the two form the basis of my pre-teen musical heritage, together with my mother singing around her chores, around her cooking, singing Sesotho traditional songs or Miriam's Xhosa songs: The Click Song, or Khawuleza. Beautiful woman. Happy birthday to her.

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Gary Soto's "Making the News"

2011-03-02T05:10:00.000+01:00

It's not right to burn newsprint,
The stink of ink in the air,
But I have to crumple at least a few pages
And strike a match in the fireplace-
The bad years go up in a question mark of smoke.
Or should I make confetti from the sports section,
Or shape a dunce hat from the business page-
I, the investor in rubber bands
That shot me in the foot.
Or should I cut out coupons-
Two cans of soup for the price of one.
Or, for a laugh, should I spread open the comics
On the kitchen table and string a macaroni necklace,
The playground craft I could master.
I choose smoke and fire,
The sting in my eyes on this January day,
And poke a wreath of newspaper
Until it crackles with a steady fire.
Let's air out the square and oval rooms.
Let's wave at a dog frolicking on the lawn.
Let's hear children and the tap of rain on a tulip.
Let's welcome the new resident to our house,
His handshake strong from the clasp of so many.
© Gary Soto

[source...]

A Discovery: Charles Bradley

2011-02-27T14:07:00.000+01:00

The Ear is a Great Editor

2011-02-27T00:09:00.000+01:00

African Bloggers Statement on David Kato and Uganda

2011-02-25T06:05:00.007+01:00

"We the undersigned wish to express our deep sadness at the murder of Ugandan human rights defender David Kato on 26th January 2011. David's activism began in the 1980s as an Anti-Apartheid campaigner where he first expressed a strong passion and conviction for freedom and justice which continued throughout his life. David was a founding member of Sexual Minorities Uganda where he first served as Board member and until his death as Litigation and Advocacy Officer and he was also a member of Integrity Uganda, a faith-based advocacy organization.

David was a man of vision and courage. One of his major concerns was the growth of religious fundamentalism in Uganda and across the continent and how this would impact on the rights of ordinary citizens including lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered / Gender Non-Comforming and Intersex [LGBTIQ] persons. Years later his concerns were justified when the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill backed by religious fundamentalists was outlined in 2009. David was also an extremely brave man who had been imprisoned and beaten severely because of his sexual orientation and for speaking publicly against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

Many African political and religious leaders in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Zambia, Gambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Malawi and Botswana, have publicly maligned LGBTIQ people and in some cases directly incited violence against them whilst labeling sexual minorities as “unAfrican”.

In October 2010, the Ugandan tabloid, Rolling Stone published the names and photographs of "100 Top homos" including David Kato. David along with two other LGBTIQ activists successfully sued the magazine on the grounds of "invasion of privacy" and most importantly, the judge ruled that the publication would threaten and endanger the lives of LGBTIQ persons.

The court did not only rule that the publication would threaten and endanger the lives of LGBTIQ persons but it issued a permanent injunction against Rolling Stone newspaper never to publish photos of gays in Uganda, and also never to again publish their home addresses.

Justice Kibuuka Musoke ruled that,
"Gays are also entitled to their rights. This court has found that there was infringement of some people’s confidential rights. The court hereby issues an injunction restraining Rolling Stone newspaper from future publishing of identifications of homosexuals."

Every human being is protected under the African Charter of Peoples and Human Rights and this includes the rights of LGBTIQ persons. We ask the governments of Uganda and other African countries to stop criminalizing people on the grounds of sexual orientation and afford LGBTIQ people the same protections, freedoms and dignity, as other citizens on the continent."

Anengiyefa Alagoa, Things I Feel Strongly About
Anthony Hebblethwaite,   African Activist
Barbra Jolie, Me I Think
Ben Amunwa, Remember Ken Saro-Wiwa
Bunmi Oloruntoba, A Bombastic Element
Chris Ogunlowo, Aloofaa
Eccentric Yoruba, Eccentric Yoruba
Exiled Soul ExiledSoul
Francisca Bagulho and Marta Lança, Buala
Funmilayo Akinosi, Finding My Path
Funmi Feyide, Nigerian Curiosity
Gay Uganda , Gay Uganda
Glenna Gordon, Scarlett Lion
Godwyns Onwuchekwa, My Person
Jeremy Weate, Naija Blog
Kadija Patel,   Thoughtleader
Kayode Ogundamisi,   Canary Bird
Keguro Macharia, Gukira
Kenne Mwikya, Kenne’s Blog
Kinsi Abdullah Kudu Arts
Laura Seay, Texas in Africa
Llanor Alleyne Llanor Alleyne
Mark Jordahl, Wild Thoughts from Uganda
Matt Temple, Matsuli Music
Mia Nikasimo, MiaScript
Minna Salami, MsAfropolitan
Molisa Nyakale, Molisa Nyakale
Mshairi, Mshairi
Ndesanjo Macha Global Voices
Nyokabi Musila, Sci-Cultura.
Nzesylva, Nzesylva’s Blog
Olumide Abimbola, Loomnie
Ory Okolloh, Kenyan Pundit
Pamela Braide, pdbraide
Peter Alegi, Football is Coming Home
Rethabile Masilo, Poéfrika
Saratu Abiola, Method to Madness
Sean Jacobs, Africa is a Country
Sokari Ekine, Black Looks
Sonja Uwimana, Africa is a Country
Spectra Speaks, Spectra Speaks
TMS Ruge, Project Diaspora
Tosin Otitoju, Lifelib
Toyin Ajao StandTall
Val Kalende, Val Kalende
Zackie Achmat, Writing Rights
Zion Moyo, Sky, Soil and Everything in Between

The Spirit

2011-02-24T08:17:00.024+01:00

The circle is closing, and
unless there's penance,
no love will be green on the field.
When Jesus died, Simon
had carried the cross to the hilltop
and tamed its woodiness, making it his;
Simon probably just took off his coat,
threw that crux on his shoulder,
and marched up. The poet says
that's what any African would do;
But after tea when the sun
lowers eyes to visit the unknown--
and evening comes up the stairs
with a bedside lamp and a book of poems
in its black hand, no one knows
if the time is right. In graves of the Atlantic
skulls sit open-mouthed, their calls
for clemency, and sometimes I'm sure
some dark profanity, frozen to the floor.
Siblings gathered for dinner under the stars,
at the table of history, a vision
of hearts splintering and split apart
into the most beautiful, unhappy thing.

Malcolm X was killed on 21 February, 45 years ago

2011-02-22T00:42:00.000+01:00

After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X became a Sunni Muslim and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, after which he disavowed racism. He traveled extensively throughout Africa and the Middle East. He founded Muslim Mosque, Inc., a religious organization, and the secular, black nationalist Organization of Afro-American Unity. Less than a year after he left the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X was assassinated while giving a speech in New York.
[source...]

Happy birthday, Ishmael Reed!

2011-02-22T00:02:00.003+01:00

Ishmael Scott Reed (February 22, 1938) is an American poet, essayist and novelist. Reed is one of the best-known African-American writers of his generation, and along with Amiri Baraka is one of the most controversial (and politically left-wing). His work consistently satirizes the American right-wing (and often the left as well), highlighting domestic political and cultural oppression.

While some have found Reed's work a vivid, comic depiction of America, others have criticized it as incoherent or muddled. Another group of public intellectuals has argued that some of Reed's work is misogynistic because of his criticism of the movie version of "The Color Purple," which the novel's author, Alice Walker, also criticized.

While he is among a number of black male authors who are criticized as "misogynist" by mostly white feminists, Reed can point to a number of black feminists who defend him, including many whose work he has published.
[source...]

Reed edits Konch Magazine which features poetry, fiction, essays and photography. In the Winter 2008 issue editorial, he says, "Konch began as a print magazine in 1990 and went online in 1998.Konch continues to publish those voices that are ignored by the American media, which abandoned their goal of diversifying their ranks by the year 2000- a goal set by the late Robert Maynard. Unlike the mainstream writers who spend two hour lunches hobnobbing with those whom they cover, the contributors to Konch are volunteers. [source...]"

Happy birthday Mr. Reed!

Jacket Notes

Being a colored poet
Is like going over
Niagara Falls in a
Barrel

An 8 year old can do what
You do unaided
The barrel maker doesn't
Think you can cut it

The gawkers on the bridge
Hope you fall on your
Face

The tourist bus full of
Paying customers broke-down
Just out of Buffalo

Some would rather dig
The postcards than
Catch your act

A mile from the drink
It begins to storm

But what really hurts is
You're bigger than the
Barrel
© Ishmael Reed

If you're lucky

2011-02-20T00:39:00.002+01:00

If You Are Lucky
(by Michelle McGrane)

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you
for the rest of your life,
a night like no other.
You won’t see it coming.

Forget the day, the year.
It will arrive uninvoked,
an astrological anomaly.

You will remember
how every cell in your body
knew him, this stranger,

how you held your breath,
the way you searched his face.
This is how such evenings begin.

And you will be real in your skin,
bone and sinew; the way you always thought
you could be. Effortlessly
This is how you will fit together.

His parted lips between your thighs,
your half-lit nipples darkening,
the hot-breathed arrival of desire,
the frenzied coupling
as you opened soundlessly
and the world flooded into you.

In the morning, maybe,
soon after sunrise
you will walk barefoot above a waterfall in the forest,
light-headed with the smell of sex
laughing at your déshabillée.

You will carry
the music of this memory with you
and from time to time,
in the small, withered hours,
your body will sing its remembering.
__________

More:

Happy birthday, Smokey!

2011-02-19T05:16:00.000+01:00

William "Smokey" Robinson was born on 19 February 1940. Happy Birthday to him.
© and photo credit: http://imagecache2.allposters.com

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Our Winter Day

2011-02-18T16:08:00.010+01:00

Surely our walk will soon
become a wall of dark dreams,
given that since you left home
there have been no options,
brother, for body or for mind;
and this park where you lie
holds no promise of remission.
We sit here listening to wind
whip the leaves of this oak
that grows on your grave.
To weed this mound and
chuck away dandelions,
hard tufts of tussock stuck
to our memory, hoe, rake
the surface with our hands,
is to accept the solitude
of your room. On a clear day
in winter one can see the tree,
gnarled by the cold months'
abscission, reach up to grab
heaven by its lapels. Seasons
go, and wrapped in bark against
the chill, the tree shakes birds
in its branches. Meanwhile,
through summertime, its roots
drink your blood, your blood
that clings to leaves that float
earthward on scarlet wings.

Prompted by Big Tent Poetry

ARRIVING AT THE NIGHT FIRE(by Dorian Haarhoff)

2011-02-17T08:00:00.000+01:00

in Motetema, Limpopo Province
I feed the teachers,
morning to late light,
a feast of stories.

as the sun sifts the room
one ladles a question
onto my plate.
it lies there like the pap
we ate at lunch.

Who did you inherit story-telling from?

a big meal question.
he watches me chew. first response,
inside, I say, No one. It started here.
but this Lazarus has raised a ghost.
I take his question down to my gut
to search for one who hands down gifts.
who multiplies fish and bread.

I answer his gaze. when I tell,
the story comes from somewhere else,
through me. You see this?
he slowly nods and smiles.

a match strikes a woodpile.
Europe and Africa
blood and belonging
reconcile in the telling.
it is the ancestors who story through me.
a night fire ignites my belly.
© Dorian Haarhoff

SUMMER LOVEby Geoffrey Philp

2011-02-15T02:30:00.002+01:00

(for Nadia)

"And summer's lease hath all too short a date."
- Sonnet XVIII ~ William Shakespeare

When evening marches down Flagler
to the tumble of closing cash registers,
the mold of faded bills in the back
pocket of his blue, pin-striped suit,
she will go with him only as far
as the river to watch fishing
boats with their tail of terns and pelicans
flashing their bright wings, like silver,
against the glass vaults of Brickell.

But when night ambles along Biscayne
with the rumble of reggae in his stride,
tabaco and mojitos on his breath,
desire wrapped around his waist,
she will lead him down the causeway
into cooling waters of the bay,
the daily cares sliding off their flesh,
and her dark laughter, like waves,
lapping the sides of the Rickenbacker.
© Geoffrey Philp

I have been enjoying Geoffrey's poetry for some time now. And I don't mind sharing. Here are just some of his writings that I've read over and over, and posted on this blog, or found elsewhere on the web.

But don't stop there, because there is also his blog, and books, to discover. Happy reading everyone. Here's a parting jab:

CARIB STEW
(by Geoffrey Philp)

first, you need a pot or basin
large enough to bury
the ingredients under salt
water; throw in the cheapest bones:
africans, indians (three continents),
chinese, lebanese, the odd jew;
add to the stock: english beef, scotch
bonnet peppers, a smack of spanish
parsley, irish potatoes and slivers of french
bread; bring to a boil with colonialism,
capitalism, democratic socialism
and soon islands of froth, small
as grenada, should be scooped
off the top and the bones removed,
for if left on the bottom for too long
they will ferment into a riot of flavor
too strong for american tastes.
(the jaw bones of goats, round
as the stones on the south side
of cuba, should never be used.)
stir well to the consistency of molasses,
and simmer for five hundred years.
for best results, serve while hot!

SATURN'S CHILD (by January O'Neil)

2011-02-13T00:47:00.001+01:00

When my father snores
he sucks in the whole world
and releases it in one pure breath.
At night I’d come into his room
where he would pass out on the bed—
too drunk to change his clothes or
put out his cigarette, which had
burnt itself down to the embers. I pulled
off his shoes and watched him sleep,
smelling his sweet, stale breath
fill the room in waves. He was so out of it
I could put my finger into his mouth and pull it out
before he inhaled.
Once I let my finger linger a second
too long and his tongue touched the flat of my tip.
I thought of going in deeper, first a hand, then an arm;
the tender cutlet of my body swallowed whole by my
father. But I was barely enough to make him cough.
He rolled over on his side, leaving a well in the space
where his body had been. I crawled back into my own bed,
as my father slept the peaceful sleep of ogres, feeling
the house shake with his rhythmic tremors.
© Poet Mom

Tsamaea Hantle, bra Winston, 1943 - 2009

2011-02-12T06:40:00.000+01:00

Mankunku

Dark golden boat
on a sea
far away, rock with me
rock with me:

deep-throated bird
gentle me home
past the mud-lined street
where thoughts stick fast
and children pick rubbish
hungrily

the night flakes notes
from the scalp of my sorrow

hide in my pillow
and cry for me
© Kelwyn Sole 1987

[source of poem...]

[interview with kelwyn sole...]

"Legendary jazz saxophonist Winston Mankunku Ngozi died at Victoria Hospital in Wynberg, Cape Town, the ANC said.

Ngozi, 66, died from a heart-related illness, ANC spokesperson Brian Sokutu said in a statement.

'His death is a huge loss to South Africa, particularly the music fraternity. We join many South Africans in paying tribute to this jazz icon who became a beacon of hope and inspired so many artists.'

He said Ngozi used his talent to inspire social, economic, cultural and political change in the country.

Ngozi's recording in 1968 of the famous Yakhal' Inkomo album , together with Early Mabuza, Agrippa Magwaza and Lionel Pillay, earned him the 'Jazz Musician of the Year' award."
[source...]

"I Want to Write", by Margaret Walker

2011-02-12T00:06:00.000+01:00

I want to write
I want to write the songs of my people.
I want to hear them singing melodies in the dark.
I want to catch the last floating strains from their sob-torn
throats.
I want to frame their dreams into words; their souls into
notes.
I want to catch their sunshine laughter in a bowl;
fling dark hands to a darker sky
and fill them full of stars
then crush and mix such lights till they become
a mirrored pool of brilliance in the dawn.
© Margaret Walker

SONNET, (by Alice Dunbar-Nelson)

2011-02-11T00:41:00.000+01:00

I had no thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists' shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that God has made,--
Wild violets shy and heaven-mounting dreams.
And now -- unwittingly, you've made me dream
Of violets, and my soul's forgotten gleam.