How Come

HOW COME I’M STILL SINGLE!!!
Well maybe its not you its them
maybe their scared
maybe their intimidated maybe their gunshot
maybe I’m tired of them bullshit crutches
weak ass excuses but to scared to grab a gun and fire
HOW COME?
I can cook my ass off talk cars, sports, politics, wax it with passion yo and still single
not perfect
not to good to be true
but I work my ass off do my best to be the shit for my nigga
Will cook catfish ass naked in high heels
suck and fuck like a champ
give them fever
HOW COME?
“Oh well baby you to good for me”
“Uh baby I don’t deserve you”
Don’t settle for that come up
step up
HOW COME?
You response with
“You tryna change me”
HOW COME?
You weren’t ready and wanted to “just be friends”
When I perfectly rolled the tree on the first try cause I heard you say that’s the sexiest thing a sister could do for her man
HOW COME?
You don’t realize and don’t remember that the king is suppose to be with the queen not the court jester
HOW COME?
I heard that after 9/11 folks got more committed to life, love, spirit, family
are we saying that tragedy and fear should jump start the heart
we mustn’t forget these classic crutches
excuses
“Uh, I had a fucked up childhood” (who hasn’t)
“Uh, well I’ve been hurt real bad” (who hasn’t)
“Oh, well baby you know what baby you see the time is not right see I wanna be in a certain place financially, emotionally, spiritually”
“Yeah well baby most people are divorced and if they are together they ain’t happy”
So?
And?
Have we forgotten yall that once upon a time high school sweethearts who met in third grade actually got married and they built a life
and shared a life
and set and made goals
and loved with souls
Is that a fairytale lived of long ago
I don’t know
How far away from that do we go to get back to that
cause you know
history does repeat itself
HOW COME?
We can’t meet each other in the middle
without fears and our hangups and our issues
HOW COME?
We can’t meet each other in the middle and live and love and live and love and live and love
HOW COME?

Kim Fields

EMPLOYEED POOR

Living in this city aint no joke!
I'm working 40 hours a week just to stay broke.
Property is still the great divider cause landowners still got all the power.
What's the difference between me and an indentured servant
when 50 percent of my pay check goes just to pay rent?
I've got collectors siphoning me off just a little at a time
these monthly bleedings got me losing my mind!
I'm talking GAS, Electric, phone-I aint even got CABEL!-
If luxury is the Garden of Eden then call me Cain and Abel
cause I am fighting with myself. Struggling to retain my drive
cause ya have to keep on hustlin if ya want to stay alive. 
See, I gambled on education but all I got is loans,
I went for the chicken but instead I got the bones. 
I'm living in a Lilliputian apartment and I'm feeling like Gulliver. 
I've got a bedroom/dining/living-room/other. 
I've got a loft bed where I sleep high in the sky. 
I climb the ladder each night reaching for my piece of the pie. 
I rise before sunshine alone and in pain. Shower unconscious,
dreams dribble down the drain,
always running late, the train doors wake me with a jerk,
riding the middle passage each morn from home to work.
I'm getting sick of this Sisyphean struggle,
but all the alternatives only spell trouble. 
What am I supposed to do, quit my job?  become a bum?
I've done that- not being able to afford food is NOT FUN. 
I'm on the treadmill heading to wealth and
I'm about to drop dead doing this shit for my health.

Claudia Alick

What are you fighting for? -Gemini

I Try

Games, changes and fears
When will they go from here
When will they stop
I believe that fate has brought us here
And we should be together
But wer,e not
I play it off but I'm dreamin of you
I'll keep it cool but I'm fiendin.
I try to say goodbye and I choke
I try to walk away and I stumble
Though I try to hide it it's clear
My world crumbles when you are not near
Goodbye and I choke
I try to walk away and I stumble
Though I try to hide it, it's clear
My world crumbles when you are not near

I may appear to be free
But I'm just a prisoner of your love
I may seem alright and smile when you leave
But my smiles are just a front
I play it off but I'm dreamin of you
I'll keep my cool but I'm fiendin
I try to say goodbye and I choke
I try to walk away and I stumble
Though I try to hide it it's clear
My world crumbles when you are not near

Here is my confession
May I be your possesion
Boy I need your touch
Your love kisses and such
With all my might I try
But this I can't deny
I play it off but im dreamin of you
I'll keep my cool but I'm fiendin
I try to say good bye and I choke
I try to walk away and I stumble
Though I try to hide it it's clear
My world crumbles when you are not near 

Macy Gray

UNITY POEM

When we ran away from the towering inferno
of terrorism, we became one human race!

When the planes hit and the imposing buildings
fell, we ran in one direction - towards safety!

When we prayed together and lit candles
we longed for hope and became one faith!

When millions observed silence, and thousands
protested against war, we spoke one language!

When we volunteered and collected blood,
all religions mingled in our arteries and veins!

When guns were consigned to fire and hands
were joined in unity, poverty ended, tears vanished!

When leaders united with the commoners and
sang together 'World is One', peace returned!
Dr Leo Rebollo

Niggers are scared of revolution

Niggers are scared of revolution but niggers shouldn't be scared of revolution because revolution is nothing but change, and all niggers do is change. Niggers come in from work and change into pimping clothes to hit the street and make some quick change. Niggers change their hair from black to red to blond and hope like hell their looks will change. Niggers kill others just because one didn't receive the correct change.

Niggers always going through bullshit changes. But when it comes for a real change Niggers are scared of revolution.

Niggers fuck. Niggers fuck fuck fuck. Niggerrs love the word fuck. They think they're fucking cute. They fuck you around. The first thing they say when they're mad is "fuck it." You play a litle too much with them they say "fuck you." Try to be nice to them they fuck you over. When it's time to TCB niggers are somewhere fucking. Niggers don't realize while they're doing all this fucking they're getting fucked around. But when they do realize it's too late, so all niggers do is just get fucked . . . up!

Niggers talk about fucking ... Fucking that ... Fuycking this ... Fucking yours ... Fucking my sis. Not knowing what they fucking for. Ain't fucking for love and appreciation. Just fucking to be fucking. Niggers fuck white thighs, brown thighs, yellow thighs. Niggers fuck ankles when they run out of thights. Niggers fuck Sally Linda and Sue. And if you don't watch out niggers will fuck you ...

Niggers would fuck fuck if it could be fucked. But when it comes to fucking for revolutionary causes Niggers say FUCK! ... revolution.
Niggers are scared of revolution.
-1970

THE LAST POETS

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

 

My world it moves so fast today
The past it seems so far away
And life squeezes so tight that I cant breathe
And every time I’ve tried to be
What someone has thought of me
So caught up I wasnt able to acheive
But deep in my heart the answer it was in me
And I made up my mind to define my own destiny
I look at my environment
And wonder where the fire went
What happened to everything we used to be
I hear so many cry for help
Searching outside of themselves
Now I know that his strength is within mebut
Deep in my heart the answer it was in me
And I made up my mind to define my own destiny
But deep in my heart the answer it was in me
And I made up my mind to define my own destiny

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine 

Pablo Neruda

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me. 

Maya Angelou

Where the Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Shel Silverstein

Oiled To Foolishnes

 Drinks and broke;
Gambles away, violent home;
Home abused, neglected;
Comparable analog.

All over the world;
Worst in Africa;
Oil boom, human nightmare;
Nation suffocates;

Sold in barrels;
Accounted in margins;
Pockets full, treasury dry;
Loot 'Swissed';

Ethnic bickering;
Resource control fumes;
Gun barrels hold unity;
Nation in coma;

Gravely deep sleep;
Angels hover above,
For nations requiem mass;
Oiled to foolishness?

Chief Charles O. Okereke

Forty Acres

Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving —

a young Negro at dawn in straw hat and overalls,

an emblem of impossible prophecy, a crowd

dividing like the furrow which a mule has ploughed,

parting for their president: a field of snow-flecked

cotton

forty acres wide, of crows with predictable omens

that the young ploughman ignores for his unforgotten

cotton-haired ancestors, while lined on one branch, is

a tense

court of bespectacled owls and, on the field's

receding rim —

a gesticulating scarecrow stamping with rage at him.

The small plough continues on this lined page

beyond the moaning ground, the lynching tree, the tornado's

black vengeance,

and the young ploughman feels the change in his veins,

heart, muscles, tendons,

till the land lies open like a flag as dawn's sure

light streaks the field and furrows wait for the sower.

A poem for Barack Obama from Nobel winner Derek Walcott

So, what’s the point in living?

Once upon a time in Hollywood, smoking was considered the height of sophistication. Glamorous girls puffed daintily on Virginia Slims, while tough dudes smoked Sportsman.

In fact in the ‘80s, the most popular advert both on TV and the Kenya Newsreel in the film theatres was the one of a couple in a red Mustang who sped out to some picturesque countryside and played chess, then as the sun set over the savannah, they smoothly lit their Embassy Kings.

In 2010, it is impossible to find such an advertisement in Kenya.Health warnings

‘Cigarettes are harmful to your health’ campaigns became ‘Smoking kills’, complete with warnings on the packets. And I feel sure we’re moving in the direction of the USA where the warnings on cigarette packets are so many (‘Smoking this pack will distort your Mitochondria and you’ll give birth to a two-headed Mongoloid with five arms’) it is hard to tell what brand it is.

‘Two and-a-half million people die from smoking every year globally’ is the official figure. But did you know smoking is also associated with chronic low back pain among younger adults? I didn’t, until last week, when I read an article by Dr Shiri of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.

Drinking beer — and eating roast goat — causes gout, and liquor finishes your liver and kills you. So does sex, one of the most pleasurable past-times known to man, bird, animal and beast. You cannot even take comfort in gastronomic delights. Chips and chocolates will literally ‘fatten you for the kill’ through obesity and then heart attack. Red meat is also supposedly bad for your health, so you need to eat like an herbivore.

Coffee has caffeine, so it is supposedly just like a liquid cigarette, and tea has something or the other that messes up your dopamine levels. And if you thought you could take refuge in water, drink too much and you get hyper-gly-something, but too little means you’re dehydrated.

Gloom and doom

White bread lowers your immunity levels while eggs over-protein-ise the system and makes you vulnerable to a number of maladies. If you don’t exercise, you will die, but if one over-exercises, one could collapse like a cardiac house of cards.

Even the additives that add ‘spice to life’ are bad for your health. Sugar leads to diabetes, salt makes one prone to strokes, and so on and so forth.

In New York restaurants, the city health authorities are now asking that the number of calories in each sugar packet be printed on them. As for ‘fat-free’ products, this is all the fad, and the fuss has spread all the way to Kenya where everything is ‘herbal’.

Now our own authorities have joined the "Kenyan Kill Joy Boys’ Choir,’ (KKJBC) and decided that too much noise is harmful to our health. Excited young Kenyans now cannot ride in matatus and listen to the ‘boom-twaff’ that is the joy of youth. The matatu touts cannot shout, so how does one know where their vehicles are headed? We can’t read, you know!

Last straw

But what finally broke this camel’s was a recent news item from some US journal which informed us that "every hour spent sitting in front of the TV raises a person’s risk of death from cardiovascular disease by 18 per cent, and the risk of cancer by nine per cent."

The long and short of it? To live long, one cannot drink, smoke, have sex, eat chips, chocolates, nyama choma, drink too much or too little water, let alone tea or coffee, eat white bread or eggs, exercise or not at all, listen to music, watch TV, etc, etc!

What is the point of living?

As a colleague glumly concludes, "Waking up in 2010 could be harmful to your health." And by the very act of being born, don’t babies already sign up to something that says, "Living will be hazardous to your health" and at some point, will certainly end in death?

By Tony Mochama

Al B Back - "Super Negro"

"My skin can somehow allow me to see more cells than Stan sees seashells.
I can have the power to inject superhuman strength inside two generations ago… As she grips her purse tighter than she’s ever gripped it before, I know that it was my doing.
All minds and all eyes and all hope is on me... in a room where a wallet is stolen.
I can make you pick me for any sport…before you found out that I’m just a poet with seven sisters. However, since you want me to play, how can I own myself?
I am so mature that my face can rearrange in days and change in ways that cops everyday need to stop me and see my I.D…just to make sure I am who I say I am. Except on job applications.
Usually, my majestic self don’t concern with rumors…however, ladies….....
………………..It’s true.
I am not a Republican.
Don’t get surprised at the chance and the dance in ME because this is ME.
“Cool to be your driver but not your son-in-law” ME.
“I can get you dead presidents as long as I never wanna be one” ME.
“Hang on rims, hang on trees, hang up on bill collectors” ME.
Chickens in fear bow when they see ME.
Surveillance cameras always make it their point to see ME.
Justin Timberlake still can NEVER be ME.
And despite all that goes on around me, I just want arms to come around me and hold me…despite what you think I am."

Coded Language - Saul Williams

Saul Williams performs his popular poetry piece Coded Language of Def Poetry Jam.  

Praise Poem

We praise the man who,
though he held the match between
his finger and his thumb,
beheld the terror of its tiny drop of phosphorous,
its brown and globoid smoothness
like a charred and tiny skull
and so returned it to its box.

So too, we hail the youth who,
though he took his panga on the march,
perceived it odd within his fist
when there was neither scrub
nor firewood to be felled,
so laid it down.

An acclamation for the man who,
though he saw the woman running, clothing torn,
and though he lusted,
saw his mother in her youth,
restrained his colleagues
and withdrew.

We pay our homage to the man who,
though his heart was like a stone
and though he took a stone to cast,
could feel its hardness in the softness of his palm
and grasped the brittleness of bone,
so let it drop.

We laud the man who,
though he snatched to scrutinise
the passenger’s I.D.,
saw not the name – instead, the face –
and slid it back
as any friend might slide his hand to shake a friend’s.

And to the rest of us,
a blessing:
may you never have to be that man,
but if you have to,
BE!

Poem by Stephen Derwent Partington

Gabriel Peri

A man has died who had no other shield
Than his arms open wide to life
A man has died who had no other road
Than the road where rifles are hated
A man has died who battles still
Against death against oblivion

For all the things he wanted
We wanted too
We want them to-day
Happiness to be the light
Within the heart within the eyes
And justice on earth

There are words that help us to live
And they are plain words
The word warmth the word trust
Love justice and the word freedom
The word child and the word kindness
The names of certain flowers and certain fruits
The word courage and the word discover
The word brother and the word comrade
The name of certain lands and villages
The names of women and friends
Now let us add the name of Peri
Peri has died for all that gives us life
Let's call him friend his chest is bullet-torn
But thanks to him we know each other better
Let's call each other friend his hope lives on.

Poem by Paul Eluard

Aint a ceiling - Jill Scott

i love tha future

i love tha future
i love the idea of the future
i love tha idea of sayin ,wait a minute
let’s make a future, lets make this pretty,
make it good, make it sweet, make it juicy,
make it real, make it, you know something
other than pre-packaged bullshit, i want a future that,
you know is a Peoples future, God loves everybody,
but you know, you could have a bowl on the table and say, sit down have some,
not that you have to audit, or you have to watch your back, to see who is going to take it away from you,
but a open free, up future and i feel that part of loving myself,
part of being myself, is feeling that im women enough, human being enough,
ta, ta, to make that, you know weather its cooking it in my kitchen,
cooking it up on, on ah er a piece of paper , weather its cooking it up on er ah the way,
i, i see things, the way i do things, i believe in loving tha future, loving enough to make it,
and eh ah making it real, i believe in that shit, ok you know its like,
i know i love John Coltrane, i know i love you know, black beans and rice,
i know i love my baby, i know i love my momma, those are concrete loves,
i can expand and say, i love him and People from all places and ah the Planet and that’s abstract love,
but it’s a real love, its universal, its you know something, i’m working on, trying to make stronger,
trying to make bigger, trying to make heavier, you know, umm, but, i think that one of the loves that,
that’s hardest you see, is loving the future, i love tha future, you know,
i wanna understand the past and i’ll work on it constantly trying to understand
and I’ll work on trying to understand tha future, but i don’t wanna bring it you know,
(laughing) i wanna go on, i wanna open up, i wanna free up, i wanna, you know let go,
i wanna say, wait a minute, I want another kind of world here, i wanna be free love,
i don’t want nobody you know, um, you know following me down the street, trying to rape me,
or trying to beat me up, or i don’t wanna you know, to walk down the street and, and, and you look at somebody you
know, hungry, homeless, wait a minute.........

Poem by Assata Shakur 

Open Your Eyes - The Mad Poet

The Mad Poet is a spoken word artist from the Jane-Finch area. The Mad Poet uses this eclectic musical style to showcase her commentary about the social and racial realities growing up in Jane and Finch.