live life fast

sweet

light will always shine,

soar, chant, love,

rock,

play,

never dream less,

no bitter ache.

a gift can leave,

my drive, my vision is essential.

Some women wait for their right
train     in the wrong station
in the alleys of morning
for the noon to holler
the night come down.

Some women wait for love
to rise up
the child of their promise
to gather from earth
what they do not plant
to claim pain for labor
to become
the tip of an arrow   to aim
at the heart of now
but it never stays.

Some women wait for visions
that do not return
where they were not welcome
naked
for invitations to places
they always wanted
to visit
to be repeated.

Some women wait for themselves
around the next corner
and call the empty spot peace
but the opposite of living
is only not living
and the stars do not care.

Some women wait for something
to change            and nothing
does change
so they change
themselves.

– Audre Lorde

92. The East Coast, from Somalia to Mozambique, has ruins of well over 50 towns and cities. They flourished from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries AD.

93. Chinese records of the fifteenth century AD note that Mogadishu had houses of “four or five storeys high”.

94. Gedi, near the coast of Kenya, is one of the East African ghost towns. Its ruins, dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, include the city walls, the palace, private houses, the Great Mosque, seven smaller mosques, and three pillar tombs.

95. The ruined mosque in the Kenyan city of Gedi had a water purifier made of limestone for recycling water.

96. The palace in the Kenyan city of Gedi contains evidence of piped water controlled by taps. In addition it had bathrooms and indoor toilets.

97. A visitor in 1331 AD considered the Tanzanian city of Kilwa to be of world class. He wrote that it was the “principal city on the coast the greater part of whose inhabitants are Zanj of very black complexion.” Later on he says that: “Kilwa is one of the most beautiful and well-constructed cities in the world. The whole of it is elegantly built.”

98. Bling culture existed in early Tanzania. A Portuguese chronicler of the sixteenth century wrote that: “[T]hey are finely clad in many rich garments of gold and silk and cotton, and the women as well; also with much gold and silver chains and bracelets, which they wear on their legs and arms, and many jewelled earrings in their ears”.

99. In 1961 a British archaeologist, found the ruins of Husuni Kubwa, the royal palace of the Tanzanian city of Kilwa. It had over a hundred rooms, including a reception hall, galleries, courtyards, terraces and an octagonal swimming pool.

100. In 1414 the Kenyan city of Malindi sent ambassadors to China carrying a gift that created a sensation at the Imperial Court. It was, of course, a giraffe.

The night, i can’t remember

Not even the ocean itself could remember.

Btu i can’t forget the first Alcatraz I saw.

High up, the clouds, like innocent witnessing presences.

By chance, i haver forgotten neither my lost coast, nor my ancestral tongue.

They brought me here and here I have lived.

And because i worked like a beast

Here I was born again.

How many a Manginga legend have I resorted to.

I rebelled.

His Honour bought me in a public square.

I made His Honour’s shirt and a son.

My son was without a name.

And His Honour died by the hand of an impeccable English Lord.

I wandered.

This is the land where I suffered the whip and degradation.

I trod the length of all her rivers.

Under her sun I planted and gathered harvests I did not eat.

My home was a barracoon.

I myself carried the stones to build it,

Yet i sang to the natural rhythms of the native birds.

I rose up.

In this same land I touched the damp blood and the rotting bones of many others,

Some brought to this place like me, others not.

And i never again thought of the road to Guinea.

Was it to Guinea? Or  Benin? Was it to Madagascar? Or  Cape Verde?

I worked harder.

I enhanced my hope and age-old song.

Here I built my world.

I went to the hills.

My real independence brought me to the fort

And I rode with Maceo’s troops.

Only a century later

With me descendants

Of the blue mountain

Would I come down from the Sierra?

To put an end to capital and moneylenders

To generals and the bourgeoise

Now I am: only today do we have and create.

Nothing is taken from us.

Ours is the land.

Ours the sea and the sky.

Ours the magiv and the vision.

My peers, here I see you dance

Around the tree we plant for communism.

Her prodigious wood already resounds

the ritual that wasn’t offered (then)

Because I didn’t even know,

At the time.

I was in Nairobi…….

With borrowed time en irregular access to the internet,

but now I know, en I miss you, (does that make a/ny difference?)

Even though I never met you,

Your music changed my life,

Your words cut deep.

You are a beautiful soul.

And this eulogy is for (the) mama (of) afrika,

Miriam makeba.

in honour of your songs of freedom.

mayibuye!

thie eulogy is for (the) child of sorrows,

Michael Jackson.

A (divine) trinity of paradigm shift/er/s.

Wapinduzi.

Thank you for your gifts.

There are the brutally honest,with no filters for hot, sterilizing tongues-the poison suckers who carry loads too painful for the weak,

the soft spoken listeners who take forever and a day to take a stand, they care less (i guess) about being counted anywhere- they’re everywhere.

 There are the mediators, the monotony shakers, the promise keepers, the silence breakers, group facilitators, and those with the patience to explain it all, just one more time…

There are the knowers who need a nudge. The worriers who just won’t budge, nose divers, cautious survivors, carefree caregivers, and self-directed newcomers … in/Compatibilities cause for the most magical web of relations. Some in the net work, some don’t, some seem like they can’t, while some seem destined, but one thing that I have found is that all are capable of communicating, and love appears to be the strongest coach.

In my life I have learned so many preparations of “truth”

sour, salty, sugar sweet, bland, like sand, enough to save a dying man…

fire hot red pepper tears

congestion clears

At this point I can honestly confide: I give thanks for every serving.

U know how many truths u’ve read ,

on the tip of my tongue

across my forehead,

in my heated connection,

in my nervous stance

in my silent absence

in my raging dance

and, so much more, behind my words, they hide

let the intelligences amongst us be our guide.

ase.

yene konjit.

daughta of the most deep

no homo!

hip hop is NOT  dead, just malnourished,

and only in the mainstream at that. en queers doing hip hop is (also) revolushunary.

hip hop is D/DC &   weirdMC.

YES!  homos!

hip hop is dead prez, gif, godessa,  head roc, immortal technique, k’naan,  marvel, lauryn hill, tupac shakur, ukoo flani, wassun….hip hop is in the ghettoes en the streets.

no haters!

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i/we are

SISTAS.IN.SOLIDARITY.

 dis revolushun is not a one time event.

we are organising ourselves,

working on our (own) unity.

we are (also) recruiting

kings en queens.

foot soldiers & warriors

we want U  people!

watch this space for more details on OUR fundraiser/parties….

A (not-so) SECRET!  party on Nov 21.

en our BIG LOVE party on Dec 18.