Poetry is Dead

The truth is, was it ever alive to me?
Does a love of words define poetry?
Whether academical
Classical
Performance vocal
Or in your face Slam. The total
To me it’s more than the sum of the parts.
Not just clever words you learned to impart.
I love what wordsmiths are saying
So long as the messages they’re laying
Are something that needs to be said.
If not, poetry is dead.
Teach me with your rhymes.
I don’t want to hear your humorous lines
Written from a position of privilege,
While others suffer through your ignorance.
For music I'll take empowerment from India.Arie
And hip hop like it was supposed to be.
My passion rides on it as a medium for wearing
Stories from those whose passion is sharing
Lessons in life that need to be heard.
A fight or demand in the power of word.
Spit false talk dressed up as a thriller,
I just receive you as a lyrical killer.

The Predator

Its her eyes that grab me first.

I see her curse

If she gets beat.

This girl is living defensive heat.

The rest of her life on hold.

An expression ice cold.

Diving on every loose ball.

Basketball is her whole.

Leaping out of bounds to save it.

Supercharged, this game, she craves it.

Whatever affects her at home,

Within this rectangle she's in her zone.

This is her patch.

Off it, her catch


Is life's problems with which she deals.

On the court, for her, basketball heals.

Every frustration in her life

Is slashed with a knife.

For four quarters

She's not a daughter

A woman

A human

Black or white

She's right

Where she wants to be,

High on intensity.

Athletic

Body magic.

Outside of those skinny or fat debates,

She trains and looks at what she ate,

To highly tune her machine,

Strong yet lean.

Proud to look in the mirror

Knowing she's honed herself for superior

Definition to beat herself and her competitors.

That's why on the court she feels better than ya.

No late nights, drugs, or partying.

The epitome of discipline.

And you pay the price for her self control,

When her game reveals to you her soul.

Bookshelf

Forces in victory

Write history.

The stories from the vanquished

Are forgotten and vanish.

The views we are seeing

Are mostly European.

Hidden away from bookshop shelves

Lie tales no one tells.

Ask the Herero people how European's tried

To rid Africa of them in a genocide.

Voices call for a British spirit

With only room for whites within it.

 Recollections of the Blitz mentality,

Overlook the inequality

Suffered by men and women of the Caribbean.

The British West Indies Regiment was seeing

2000 casualties in World War One.

A war you'd think only the white man won.

Hitlers tyranny

Had no sympathy

For dark skin.

Unknown the numbers of black deaths within

Nazi  camps of concentration

Or Germany's policy of mixed race sterilisation.

African American GI's suffering a disparity of executions

Compared with whites (who also did the shooting).

Two thousand women of the Maasai

Told by courts that they lie

When claiming they were raped

By British soldiers in their own state.

Stories which lack prominence.

Many through a lack of evidence.

Yet one thing we know of western cultures

Is they document facts like data vultures,

But still we have to push and prise,

To open the truth of history's eyes.

Lingerie Gifts

She gets lingerie gifts

Tongues in a kiss.

Roses in bouquets,

Chocolates and sundaes.

Candles and scents,

On jewellery, money's spent.

Oh such a sweet Valentine.

But she thinks of the other times.

 

The days she wants peace.

Desires to be released

From the gifts she needs.

Like bandages to stop her bleed.

Ice packs on her eyes

That dark glasses have to hide.

Make up on swollen cheeks,

Repairs to broken teeth.

Tissue for a bleeding nose,

Patching up whatever shows.

Oh sweet Valentine's control.

Ownership of her dying soul

She Writes

She writes...
Her soul pens herself to the pages
As she has done throughout her ages.
The antidote to the venom of sin
That she defied from within.
Secret tears that dripped onto paper
Dotted around ink that when read later
Marked milestones in living.
All her giving
Begins in words formed in images inside
A mind that stood tall and didn’t hide
When others would have crumbled.
Not for her a rage that rumbled
Or bitterness eating at purity.
Her pureness is what got through to me.
Hours spent pouring out masterpieces
That when she releases
Onto ears and eyes
The silence is from those mesmerised.
At times like these I’m speechless,
When I see her audience so impressed
The tears she fought away in write
Appear joyfully in my eyes... she sees me wipe
Them as I’m moved beyond words.
Her heart spoke. My soul heard.

Say What

Too many people settle for what love isn't,
Ends in a truck load of what is 
Misery.
The mystery
Is recognition of what truly is,
And not the thinking it is, when it isn't.

Sum

If attitudes were a maths equation, 
We'd never solve the calculation. 
If life experiences were all the same 
Maybe we could judge and blame. 
If differences were celebrated in people, 
We'd see individuals all as equal. 
Instead our answer to humanity's sum, 
Is profile and label. Many = One.

Love and Basketball

Make words, once written on paper, 
Kiss wood, pulps originator.
Words now stretched around composites,
Bounce lives to round positives.
Confused? I'm talking future ballin',
These written words are Baden, Molten and Spalding. 
Spinning inside caressing fingers on strong hands
Reaching from athletic woman and athletic man.
Potential that lay hidden
Grows from the essence of mental discipline
Of one.
You won
When you understood you had to respect yourself
Before giving love to everyone else.
When the game of Air and 23,
Inside a rectangle set you free.
Post codes representing home and away gyms,
Not reasons for beef and disrespecting.
Your own empowerment
Showed what power was meant 
To be as your shot release
Scored hope... and peace.

FLASH

Been a while since I picked up my pen.
Didn't have an idea of when
I'd find inspiration or the need to write
Words that I use as weapons to fight.
I guess I'm just pissed at the taking of life.
Beautiful young men gone in the flash of a knife.
Suddenly the media is full of experts,
You know, white middle class fools who spurt
Opinions left, right and centre.
Politicians follow the same old agenda
Pleasing majority voters and mandates
Calling for national service and out of touch debates.
The only reason the press are vexed...
Is everyone's scared white middle England is next.
Worried at the prospect that little Nigel and Penelope
Might listen to hip hop and end up in casualty.
Let me add my Slo twist to the story,
And wind back so called care in society
To times when middle classes didn't want to know.
Life back then was about being able to show
That tea rooms were for those who aspired to be.
That's right, this is total recall on history.
The compassionate loved their sugar and tea
Enough to shackle millions into slavery.
Not even a blind eye tried to look and reason
With the African holocaust going on in the Caribbean.
So beware of the caring.
On apparent sleeve wearing

Sits inherited profits of enslavement, rape and death.
And now they point fingers at young mens' last breaths,
Ignoring the legacies they sowed
When Africa's blood flowed.
Blue uniforms in armored waistcoats,
An institutionalised gang that gloats.
Given power that goes unchecked.
Part of the problem, but they're supposed to protect.
Like ants, they become a cloned collective
That takes on the prejudices from a eurocentric perspective.
Their policy on the beat born from the same fear,
That hysterically germinates between the ears
Of white middle England...
Self-proclaimed right middle England.
Politicians pack out the House of Commons
To discuss their pay and similar problems,
But the debate on the murder of youth,
Saw Parliament empty...there lies the truth.
More lies than truth.
So dies our youth.
Victims from a sharp blade
Poisoned by deadly white shade.
On the handle, embedded DNA imprints
From a nation's guilty finger prints

The Colour of the Gun Runner

The Met tries to dent
Crime with Trident.
As if bullets have a colour.
Stereotyping some more than others.
Thinking their own are so right.
Why aren't they labeling everyone that's white
As suppliers and gun convertors?
Making death from legal replica's.
Labels allow 6 times more
Stop and searches when looking for
Prejudice of ones own mind in others pockets.
Crime. Maybe, if we want to stop it

We need to search 6 times more eurocentric homes
Until we find the known unknowns.
I'm simply following the same argument.
The police can call the operation, White-Dent.

Loving My Own

I give love.
Plenty to my kind,
Especially to those of the same kinda mind.
Those who spit against racism are blessed,
But not those who try to sound black in the process.
Those who pick up ball on the court,
But not those players who don't question lies society taught.
Those who write and take action,
But not those who do it for liberal satisfaction.
Those who take the battle to any ends,
But not those who think cool means having black friends.
Those prepared to tackle prejudice unseen,
But not those companies with equality initiatives to bring in more green.
Those who do what's right above politics,
But not those who are looking to get boxes ticked.
Those who give thanks for their daily bread,
But not those who don't care for the cost in dead.
Those who you can see the goodness in their eyes,
But not those who define Europeans as civilized.
Those whose passion is freedom for all,
But not those who think capitalism causes peace and not war. 
Those who fight injustice with bravery,
But not those who forget their wealth was inherited from slavery.

For those who think I hate my own,

Wrong, I got so much love to give in my bones.
It's just I see very few honest ingredients
That are worthy of me giving it up to pale recipients.

Original Sin

White folk acting like they're absolved by the promotion of a senator.
As if 400 years of original sin can be wiped from your
Personality trait.
But wait.
May the Great Mystery provide protection
After such a momentous election.
But if my supermarket can sell Fairtrade tea,
By definition all other brands are exploiting. See
America is a bullet away from still being called racist,
And we British think our place is
A haven for multi-cultural recognition.
No....for  multi-culture... read assimilation.
Banks rescued with money we didn't know was there,
So how come for all these years there hasn't been any spare
To share among the world's pain and misery?
The future is still based on European history.
Remember a whole holocaust was born for the need of sugar in tea.
A continents blood stirred into a civilised drink so sweetly.
So when commentators speak on this momentous occasion
I'm still wary of mouths looking like mine... Caucasian.
Common said white folk care for dogs and yoga,
Which is why the President's choice of dog is high on the agenda
Of newspapers and reporters
Who oughta
Be writing about those still displaced
From Katrina, based on race.
Or the British and American pact
That won't allow Chagos Islanders back.
Instead the concrete of a runway supports military jets.
World strategy, or imperial conquest?
My pale now celebrate as if all wrongs are right,
Forgetting how few of us ever took up the fight.
As if the glass of justice suddenly filled to the brim.
Wrong, it's half empty, and its layers are thin.

John Charles de Menezes, RIP

Never has Wright been so wrong.
Sir Michael Wright, a coroner's song
Of an Underground killing.
Only one afternoon, the media's top billing.
An inquest by jury. A family mournful.
Yet the judge ruled it couldn't be unlawful.
Eleven citizens whose open verdict would normally give
Them opportunity to comment in a narrative.
Gagged in the court by a simple questionnaire.
Tick Yes/No, or Don't really care.
A knighted gentleman of English civility.
Versed in the ways of corrupted legality.
Police collective unrecollection.
The Met given the Crown's protection.
Testimonies of a Brazilian man dying.
Witnesses proved that the blue were lying.
Manipulated photographs. It's common sense
That defines this as tampering with evidence.
The coroner excuses the police practice of dishonesty brought.
If you or I, it would be seen as contempt of court.
The police were stuck like shit to fly paper.
But the protector of the law was a justice taker.
Bullets to the head, released by the police.
John Charles de Menezes. May he Rest in Peace.

On The Beat

Dancing to the tune of a new beat.
Not drums, but bodies struck by blue heat.
Media sits up and listens
As blood glistens
On white flesh
In the Met’s mess.
Middle classes scared they could be next,
With a truncheon busting on the back of their necks.
“If you got nothing to hide, then nothing to fear,”
The years of pale words that reached oppressed ears.
And now the classes whose demand fed slavery,
Display the reality of cowardice and not bravery.
I didn’t see them caring when figures were published,
“Ethnic minorities” stopped 6 times more in the name of justice.
That’s 6 times more confrontations with the beast.
6 times more chance of joining the feast
Of 600 annual deaths in custody.
No cameras. No visibility.
And laws just passed ban photography of the police.
A gang in uniform patrolling the streets.
Daily we’re photographed 300 times.
Return the favour, it’s a 10 year crime.
Yet an autopsy was reviewed
Only after video was viewed.
Officials back track while self-protecting, 
Like Groundhog day on a Brazilian shooting.
A few bad apples in the words of the law.
Seems to me, it’s rotten to the core.