Womanity

Here’s to you.

When I’ve not trusted men friends

Cos they just want to dick you,

Liked R&B just to play you,

Letched at your sight before they hear you.

Here’s to you.

Beauty in so many forms.

My girl is the Queen of you

Cos she represents the best of all of you.

My love for womanity and all you do.

Here’s to you.

The essence of God’s humility.

Been there when I needed you.

I was birthed and nurtured by you.

Picked me up and let me trust you.

Here’s to you.

Your strength and compassion,

That wraps the gentleness of you.

The fierceness that protects those close to you.

The lioness that resides in all of you.

Here’s to you.

As a man I find you beautiful.

Eyes express the soul of you.

Lips talk the heart of you.

Body completes the mind of you.

Thanks to you.

I made it through hard times.

Fell in love with the best of you.

Was made whole by one of you.

Made a man by the female in you.

Dedicated to my partner, my daughters, my mother, my closest friends, the stronger half of the world's population, and to the Great Mystery in whatever form She may take.

A Call of Duty

Lord give me the guidance to see right from wrong.

Give me the wisdom to write of what must be undone.

Help me to understand that protest now

Seems alarmingly about how

Europeans fear capitalism is about to treat them,

When for years it’s been killing other millions.

Let us recognise this isn’t about saving our own kin

But ending a system that starves shades of darker skin.

May those who look like me

Ignore lies delivered by people they see

As looking like themselves.

Relating to stories they tell

Which are unfounded.

Please keep me grounded

When I become frustrated at tales of benefit cheats

Yet your Son loved the meek,

For let them inherit the earth

From tax haven funds of trillions more worth.

Let us reveal that the credit crunch

Has shown us every day is in fact White History Month,

As an unraveling system of economic oppression

Shows itself as colonialism by financial intervention.

May we remember that history is not a gone and forgotten,

But an evolution of the past into a rotten

Present and future. There is no line

Between now and yesteryear. Time

Is the fruit of what was sown.

Those who have, don’t want that known.

Lord, please give us the wisdom to see what is,

What was, and what should be. Let ignorant bliss

Fall, as Martin Luther King knew the score

Of white moderates being the greatest threat to the poor.

Blindly living a lie that beds them with the people

Who perpetrate the greatest forms of evil.

Help us to see that quality of life resides in the hearts

Still pumping because we choose life over the parts

Of smart phones that cause girls to be violated

For raw materials that see villages annihilated.

May we undo what the Bible and guns,

In white hands have done.

For our morality has been defined by our inventions,

Musket and sail allowed slavery through military intervention.

May the Good Book’s pages be turned so that we find

That you love those with strength who are humble and kind.

And show us that advancement comes not from the material.

But from the evolution of the human spirit. All

Wealth to be shared,
Food, shelter and welfare.

Our call of duty not for modern warfare.

Simply a world for all… Fair.

Don't call it a cometh back

Haven’t written much lately…

But reading Anne LeDoes Politically,

And it lit the fuse.

You see I used

To rhyme

Every time

To make a point.

An MC who can’t rap to make his point,

So poetry gave me the get go

To be part of hip hop and I let go.

With influences from Chuck D

To the Roots, Nas and Kweli

(Not forgetting Guru…RIP).

Enough of the madness to my method,

I wanted to talk about St Paul’s siding with Herod.

A classic case in the news,

Of the Church not playing God’s tune.

Where are the Archbishops’ saying

They disapprove of capitalism’s slayings?

Don’t get me wrong I’m a Christian and I make mistakes.

I beg forgiveness for the times I don’t give, but take.

The problem I have is

The Church of England still has this

Sin yet to be forgiven.

Yeah I remember 2007.

When Rev’s wore t shirts with how sorry they were from the heart

Of the Church’s role in tearing Africa apart.

Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t about missionaries,

No this position still seems un-visionary.

The context of their shame

Was they felt they too were to blame

For enslaving people

When singing hymns to Him that said all were equal.

Well yeah… blame? When their plantation

Branded the skin of those to be known as Bajan

With the word SOCIETY on African backs.

Can’t imagine the searing pain of that.

But a white Church like white folk

Can look back and joke.

When you’re not affected, you know,

You can just claim it was all along time ago.

So if the C of E

Really wanted to please He,

Would they not stand on the steps of St Pauls

And cry out to banks and all

That to still rape women for Coltan

And dump toxic waste on Africans,

To tell the IPCC not just to get a life

But to fork pork to save lives.

Would they not say those things?

Or is His image wrapped in too much bling?

Lord forgive us, we know not what we do.

But I can’t trust these people to guide me to you.

The Banner

Intricately I weave the name onto cloth.

Emblazed for the world to see

My mother, father, sister, brother child or grandchild

Was here, alive and kicking.

A photo enlarged and glossed,

One of my favourites, the one from the mantelpiece,

Is carefully placed in the centre,

Meticulously equidistant from the edges.

I stitch long holes along each side

So poles can be inserted,

To hold your defiance aloft

And proclaim your glory.

Wait I forgot some words.

After your closing date I write:

Rest In Peace.

Killed by the police.


photos from the march against death in custody, London Oct 2011

African land for $1.50 per hectare per year

The Guardian’s webpage uncovered an article that I found particularly disturbing. At a time when as a nation we have been forced to examine some of our core values by out of touch politicians (including a deputy Prime Minister with an arson conviction), we are once more fed a moral high ground from a UK Government. A Government regardless of political party, and whether it’s the current one or one in office two years ago, because whoever they are, they are still sustaining a type of governance and a general view of how the world should be run.

Now I’m not a proponent of any political form, nor saying how people should vote or think. My beef is actually with the overall message that is not said because our parties are too similar, that message being that having a democratic capitalist society really is the only way to run a “progressive” country… regardless of how that system is at the expense of others.

The Guardian article didn’t actually refer to actions by the United Kingdom, but no doubt global finance being what it is, and our general view of obtaining wealth from others regardless of the human cost, I find it hard to believe our involvement in the world economy doesn’t make us complicit.  

The article reports on how there is a huge land grab in Africa for cheap land, either as an investment, or to grow foods for non-African markets. One hectare of land in East Africa can be leased for $1.50 per year. Do I really need to elaborate on the way of the world that can find that not to be considered stealing.

At the same time Hilary Clinton was warning African nations to ensure they dealt with nations that had their best interests at heart (ie. The US and not China), the US and the West grows bio fuels there for the insatiable appetite for car fuel, at the expense of arable land.

Also this week, we have seen a hurricane narrowly miss Haiti where some 600,000 people still live in tents over 18 months after the earthquake, and after many millions donated. I don’t advocate anyone not giving to charity (and the events such as those in the famine in East Africa were never more pressing for help), but I do have concerns that we may donate and think we are then unaccountable.  Like many people who donated to Haiti, I found great concern at how long aid took to get off the runway in the weeks after the earthquake, and this weeks hurricane should have made every aid organisation and world government question themselves as to how they have allowed tent cities to remain for so long in a hurricane zone (let alone the risks of cholera and rape that are documented).

How do we go that extra step to make sure that those we have voted for, or donated to, or even bought products from, carry our trust. Do we simply let them carry on and reactively or even passively feel we’ve done enough, or do we say that we have to be proactive and ensure that those that are accountable… be held to account. Whether that’s household names exploiting agriculture not a million miles from a famine, world aid, raw materials for our smart phones at the expense of rape and murder, or closer to home, the deaths of young men by uniformed officers on our streets.

I’m not preaching what should be done, nor saying I do my part, but I’m simply left wondering at what point I and we decide we can no longer continue to be complicit by our inactivity, and move to a point where we say …. Not in my name.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/aug/24/indian-agribusiness-land-east-africa

UK first interview with Tamika Catchings

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Sowing The Seed

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Peace
Sloetry

A Poem, A Prayer

Dear Lord

As I seek to grow in your Love & Faith,

And find spirituality and goodness in the world around me.

Let me learn from the humble, the meek and the peacemakers.

Let me learn of your greatness in however you are,

Male or Female, in your Godly form

Or Nature’s spirits

Of ancestors or Mother Earth.

Let me question those who would bring me man’s truth

And not Your own.

Let my ears be closed to those whose church spread the globe

Because they had invented sail and musket.

Or branded darker skin on Caribbean plantations,

Carving up the continent which birthed humanity.

Let me beware of those who fought wars in your name,

And represent you through uniforms in church

That honour parade grounds and institutionalised pain,

Yet they teach me your Son was of absolute peace.

Let me learn of churches and faiths closer to you

Whose meaning has been trodden by centuries of oppression

And devalued to labels of evil by those who do not now dwell in heaven.

Teach me of churches carved in rock in East Africa,

Of indigenous spirituality stripped from my own people

That still blesses those who have been divided and ruled

But whose Faith is maintained.

For whatever form is your Great Mystery,

Let me learn to live my life by your Divine teachings,

And not by those who would describe your Son

As the same colour as my light self.

I seek your Truth, your Wisdom, your Guidance,

From You and your Disciples

Wherever they should be found.

Amen.

Fear Not

Fear defies the laws of physics.

Its perpetual energy

Starts at the most gentle of nudges,

Becoming a raging torrent

That sweeps the owner

Into an abyss of fragility.

A brain wired to always

Think the worst scenario

Entertains this downward spiral

Into dysfunction.

Let our minds switch.

Let lonely thoughts

Ramble to possibility and hope

With faster rhythms than negativity.

May peace finds its way to the hardest heart,

And positivity bless as the truth.

Let the mind be the cure,

And not the disease.

One drop of rain does not imply a storm.

It is simply water, the life giver. 

Haiti Remembered, a year on

God bless the people of Haiti. A year tomorrow since.

A year ago I lay alone.

Prone

On a Birmingham hotel bed.

I thought of the dead,

The dying

The living, the crying.

I won’t deny my eyes watered

For trapped sons and daughters.

The news channel delivered to me,

First reports of an earthquake in Haiti.

A country born from fight,

A flag made once ripped out the white

From the Tricolour.

No room for the defeated oppressor’s colour.

And yet a nation still miles from home.

Kings and Queens from ancestral homes.

The strength of people

Who had delivered themselves from evil.

A dagger through the imperial heart.

Even Napolean had been Blownapart. 

And don’t allow the French Connection

To let England hide it’s intended direction.

Abolition of the holocaust trade

Had economic reasons made

From Hispaniola’s wealthy curse.

Britain simply wanted to bankrupt the French purse.

But the war never really ended.

The West’s ego was still offended.

A worldwide conspiracy to make them pay,

Debt still owed from an enslaved day.

External influences, the european tool,

Always success through divide and rule.

Then nature raised it’s sword and slashed,

As if hurricanes hadn’t been enough.

My emotions raw at the news,

And yet my donations were abused,

Crates sat on runways,

No one digging dust from airways

Choked behind crushed doors.

Cardboard beds on hospital floors,

And the D.E.C.

Sucked D.I.C.

Today, foreign intervention,

Whatever the intention

Has sky high’d rent.

So even more are living in tents.

Aid workers there assisting,

Are causing eviction.

The media a year on in this nation…

I’m just seeing photographers on vacation.

Roll up for a tragedy pose

As life Flickr’s out with shots of toes

Curled from cholera’s grip.

How much more of this shit.

Does Haiti have to take?

The UN not protecting girls from rape.

Instead bringing in disease.

Is the cure only in keeping things clean?

I don’t know about you.

I was innoculated at school.

And still money sits and waits.

While someone earns interest from unopened crates.

Europeans rush to adopt kids like vultures

So keen to bring them up in alien cultures.

Fuck your wealth to import children.

Instead pay a family to construct a home, a building,

And stop taking from mothers whose womb has birthed

On a Caribbean island, their African earth.

I don’t doubt the resolve of this nation.

History hasn’t yet defeated a Haitian.

Let the mirror show where lies the sin.

Reflect what will be, and what has been.

Colour Barrier

Truth is I see colour.

It’s something I don’t want to see,

But until the scales of equality balance

I have to see difference.

You see, I see white everywhere.

In “multi-cultured” institutions

I see white at the helm.

Government, police and judiciary.

Media, finance and industry.

From capitalism to capital punishment,

And yes, in my mirror…

I see white.

In the language used,

I’ve had to undo years of being fed

That good comes in white packages,

Yet the Messiah Himself was not.

So let me say as a Christian,

Hallelujah, I see the dark and it is good.

Language warped, as my church has been,

To justify a Passage… not of scriptures,

But of the Middle of the Atlantic,

As African bones line the floor of an ocean,

That created a diaspora away from home,

As the church preached

White was right.

I untangle expressions like "black day"

Into a positive 24 hour period.

Frankly it’s white I see in evil power,

So I won’t indoctrinate my children

To form their mouths into first words

Of a treacherous euro babble.

The seeds of racism grow

In the unconscious mind.

So I will be awake to race,

Colour, creed and faith.

To ask me not to see colour

Ignores the legacy of my white face.