Erykah Badu – Window Seat (Poem Only)

They play it safe
are quick to assassinate  what they do not understand

They move in packs
ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another

They feel most comfortable in groups
less guilt to swallow

They are us

This is what we have become

afraid to respect the individual

A single person within a circumstance can move one to change

to love herself

to evolve

Dr. Maya Angelou On Responsibility

"It's come to me to say to each of you, that each of us,

we have the possibility of changing somebody.

Remember it. Stop it.

Don't pretend that you've always been free.

We have a responsibility to those who went before us, and those yet to come.

If you really know who you are, that you've been paid for already, you'll be a kinder person. You'll be more generous. You'll look after the children."

Huffington Post

Ai – More

for James Wright

Last night, I dreamed of America.
It was prom night.
She lay down under the spinning globes
at the makeshift bandstand
in her worn-out dress
and too-high heels,
the gardenia
pinned at her waist
was brown and crumbling into itself
What’s it worth, she cried,
this land of Pilgrims’ pride?
As much as love, I answered. More.
The globes spun.
I never won anything, I said,
I lost time and lovers, years
but you, purple mountains,
you amber waves of grain, belong to me
as much as I do to you.
She sighed,
the band played,
the skin fell away from her bones.
Then the room went black
and I woke.
I want my life back,
the days of too much clarity,
the nights smelling of rage,
but it’s gone.
If I could shift my body
that is too weak now,
I’d lie face down on this hospital bed,
this icy water called Oho River.
I’d float past all the sad towns,
past all the dreamers onshore
with their hands out.
I’d hold on, I’d hold,
till the weight,
till the awful heaviness
tore from me,
sank to bottom and stayed.
Then I’d stand up
like Lazarus
and walk home across the water.

This is getting hard for me. First Lucille Clifton and now Ai. I can’t explain why it’s hard. Just is.

Pickup the National Book Awarded Vice.

Naturally Alise - 'Wasted'

Alise from Black Woman Lost & Found has a ReverbNation site!!! I'm excited for her. She's added poems to listen to and purchase (99cents folks) and a few other caveats. I love how her tone balances the minor violin chords on 'Wasted.' Very intricate delivery offering an anxious moody blues feeling.
You can also follow her on Twitter where she shares pop culture witticisms w/ humor and truth. (I have no idea why Reverb's widget is not showing in Google Reader. Bear with me folks - on a learning curve.)

Lucille Clifton – 11/10 Again

some say the radiance around the body

can be seen by eyes latticed against

all light but the particular. they say

you can notice something rise

from the houseboat of the body

wearing the body’s face,

and that you can feel the presence

of a possible otherwhere.

not a mystical, they say, but human,

human to lift away from the arms that

try to hold you (as you did them)

and, brilliance magnified,

circle beyond the ironwork

encasing your human heart.

 

Reading this now,  the poem works as her own elegy. Check out more poems from this collection - The Book of Light.

Natasha Trethewey – My Mother Dreams Another Country

Native Guard, Tretheway's third offering, is a book of two narratives. There is a Louisiana soldier walking into the Civil War and the poet herself uncovering a relationship with her mother.

Trethewey workshopped her early poems in a supportive motley crue of Black poets. The Dark Room Collective, once hosted weekly Thomas Sayers Ellis’s, apartment honed the craft of many contemporary poets. So many members of the Dark Room Collective have gone on to win awards.  Ms. Trethewey, however, earned the Pullitzer Prize for Native Guard in 2007.

Listen to her poem “My Mother Dreams Another Country” about miscegenation in the rural south.

---

MY MOTHER DREAMS ANOTHER COUNTRY 

Already the words are changing. She is changing
    from colored to negro, black stilly ears ahead.
This is 1966 -she is married to a white man -
    and there are more names for what grows inside her.
It is enough to worry about words like mongrel
    and the infertility of mules and mulattoes
while flipping through a book of baby names.
    She has come home to wait out the long months,
her room unchanged since she's been gone:
    dolls winking down from every shelf all of them
white. Every day she is flanked by the rituals of superstition,
    and there is a name she will learn for this too:
maternal impression -the shape, like an unknown
    country, marking the back of the newborn's thigh.
For now, women tell her to clear her head, to steady her hands
    or she'll gray a lock of the child's hair wherever
she worries her own, imprint somewhere the outline
    of a thing she craves too much. They tell her
to stanch her cravings by eating dirt. All spring
    she has sat on her hands, her fingers numb. For a while
each day, she can't feel an1'thing she touches: the arbor
    out back -the landscape's green tangle; the molehill
of her own swelling. Here -outside the city limits_
    cars speed by, clouds of red dust in their wake.
She breathes it in -Mississippi -then drifts toward sleep,
    thinking of someplace she’s never been. Late,
Mississippi is a dark backdrop bearing down
    on the windows of her room. On the TV in the corner,
the station signs off broadcasting its nightly salutation:
    the waving Stars and Stripes, our national anthem.

---

Listen to Natasha Trethewey discuss Native Guard.

Read Natasha Trethewey poems from Native Guard.

Jaha Zainabu – Hold On

I  saw Jaha Zainabu perform in the early days of FlyPoet’s in Los Angeles.  I was so memorized by her voice that I scoured the Internet for her. She didn’t have much of a web presence then. Thankfully, she’s developed a web identity. I hope she’ll add videos of her performances which are truly worth seeing live.

“Hold On”  is a poem about homelessness, desperation and faith. Listen to how the accompanying bass and drums rise to meet the timbre of her voice.

• Follow Jaha Zainabu on Twitter
• Purchase her Journey on Poet Cd.
  

Wanda Coleman

One day, you will see me at a podium humming a tune before I share my poem. I won’t sound as beautiful as  Wanda Coleman.  Listen to her command of language, voice, and tone.  The second poem she reads scatters a diminuendo across the lines. Let Wanda Coleman mentor us in how to move from poem to poem with ferocity in this 10 minute set.

 

 

I fell in love with her work in Imagoes.

There are delusional nuts selling her 1994 album High Priestess of Word for less than a $1.00 on Amazon.   Purchase it!

Dr. Rashidah Abu-Bakr – Ode to an Old Piano

Last week was Amiri Baraka’s 75th birthday celebration. One of my tweeps Daoud Abu-Bakr posted pictures of the attendees.  One woman seemed familiar, below the caption was “my mother Poet Rashidah Abu- Bakr.”  This short film, created by director Ray Grist  features Dr. Abu-Bakr from her suite Music Magic.

I remember Dr. Abu-Bakr for her unique commitment of using poetry and theatre in workshops to regular folk.  Though the site is still all over the place, you can rely on the African American Literature Book Club for great content. They have a bio  of her here. 

Check out her most recent book of poems Canata for Jimmy.

Carolyn Rodgers - Affirmation

A tweet from PagesFullaSoul sent me to Carloyn M Rodgers’s Poem for Some Black Women. I went on a video search for Carloyn M Rodgers and found her at Northwestern University giving a talk on the Black Arts Movement. She ends the talk with the poem Affirmation. Don’t worry about the nearly 27 minutes, I cued the video to start directly at the poem mark with Splicd.

In her talk, she mentioned she had a broadside to share after the reading. Unfortunately, she didn’t mention any recent publications of  her self-published debut How I Got Ovah.

What images stand out to you?

Pamela Sneed - There There

I didn't learn about Oludumare, Elegba, Oshun, Yemaya, Oya, and Shango until I was 15 years old. I kept reading these names in all the literature but never truly grasped it all until I was about 18.

My uncle, a baptist minister his whole life, decided to get a formal theological training that resulted in a Doctorate of Divinity. The second doctorate in our family (the first is a neuroscientist). We had a conversation in which he compared the African American worship experiences to Youruba, Santeria, Voudon practices.

I picked up Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery at the now-closed Foozles (R.I.P.) which is somehow signed! In the following video of poem "There, There" Pamela Sneed recounts her connections to these practices.

I haven't picked up Kong yet. But if you have, add your review in the comments below.

Line by Line: A Haiku and a Recreation

 A weekly highlight of lines that struck me.

when you're open
the good and bad can enter

Open  by Alise at Black Woman Lost and Found 

You can tell by
the way she carefully rubs
her painted lips while
stroking a singular silk bead

To a Bourgeois Sister by Melanie Henderson

Visit their blogs and add these two poets to your subscription

Affirmative Action: 3 Male Poets to Follow

This blog's purpose is to highlight Black women artists, in particular poets and songwriters. Still, I believe in Affirmative Action. Below are three male poets to follow.

we know what we want
- liaison
not empty space 
Read more by Constant

And we can change anytime we want,

It all in the choice

No effort, no work, no job, no savings, no money
Read more by Dele

     
   





Then we walk—holding our
hot and cold stories—past the makeshift
poems on the wall, to a set of seats resting
on the black checkered tile.

Read more by Keith Wilson




I hope they don’t get upset at me posting their pictures (without asking permission). They’re all future babydaddy candidates (or in light of recent e-conversations, husband-material) and could be single.  Nothing sexier than a man’s mind! Subscribe to their blogs!

Line by Line

Line by Line is a weekly (hopefully) feature from my subscriptions of poets’ blogs.

wish my breast could know the sun
the same way this girl
knows danger
from Glossy by Nilsa V Torres

pour like milk from the mouth
of a hand-made antique
from Be Real Black  by Melanie Henderson

We kiss on the moon
And cuddle with the sun
from Grey Matters by Ain Hd on Black Woman Lost & Found

The treadmill is calling my name
This muffin top, showing my shame
from The Treadmill is Calling by Evelyn Alfred

Down by the Riverside
I Stood on the River of Jordan
from West African Sand by Alisa Lawton

You could play a unicorn or a wizard or golden fleece.
from  Mythical Creatures by Bianca Spriggs (by introduction of Roberto Mulatto)


Take a few moments, read and comment on their poems at their blogs.

Kola Boof - Now Playing

My literary trinity is Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Gloria Naylor. I’ll soon have to make room for another queen on the throne, Kola Boof who counts Walker and Morrison among her favorites.
Ms. Boof is an award winning writer who writes for and about African women(including those of us diasporic daughters). I had an engaging conversation with @kolaboof on Twitter who graciously sent me signed copies of Nile River Woman, Long Train to the Redeeming Sin and flesh and the devil. Each copy with a different personalized note.
Listen to my rendering of her poem Now Playing from Every Little Bit Hurts (inside Nile River Woman).