Music & Madness

Music & Madness
By Maurice Clifton Sr
Copyright 2018

 

Music & Madness; Bass rocking my world insane,

Stanzas & Bars; Melodies keep messing with my brain.

 

Tone-deaf to life; Can’t distinguish if I’m wrong or right,

Enemies jumping in and out of the chords of My Life.

 

Putting my life’s Harmonic Balance, in  a constant disarray;

Pitch-blind to the dangers, that are always coming my way.

 

Keep doing the Musical two-step, to get out of the way,

Back up my thoughts in vista, so I can now, “SEE WHAT THEY SAY”!

 

Life’s music don’t sound so bad, now that I’m able to hear,

Madness ain’t madness at all, now that there’s nothing to fear.

 

For I was born on a melody, that says, “I Was Destined to Lead”!

I’m the Maestro of My Symphony, which means, “I AM THE MASTER OF ME”!

Black History Highlights: Poets

Phillis Wheatley

Although she was an African slave, Phillis Wheatley was one of the best-known poets in pre-19th century America. Educated and enslaved in the household of prominent Boston commercialist John Wheatley, lionized in New England and England, with presses in both places publishing her poems, and paraded before the new republic’s political leadership and the old empire’s aristocracy, Wheatley was the abolitionists’ illustrative testimony that blacks could be both artistic and intellectual. Her name was a household word among literate colonists and her achievements a catalyst for the fledgling antislavery movement.

On Being Brought from Africa to America
By Phillis Wheatley

‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/phillis-wheatley

 

Black History Highlights: Poets

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoi Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka,^[1] was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the State University of New York at Buffalo and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award, in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiri_Baraka

 

I WILL NOT “APOLOGIZE”, I WILL NOT “RESIGN!” 

The recent dishonest, consciously distorted and insulting non- interpretation of my poem, “Somebody Blew Up America” by the “Anti-Defamation” League, is fundamentally an attempt to defame me. And with that, an attempt to repress and stigmatize independent thinkers everywhere. This trashy propaganda is characteristic of right-wing zealots who are interested only in slander and character assassination of those whose views or philosophies differ from or are in contradiction to theirs .First, the poem underlying theme focuses on how Black Americans have suffered from domestic terrorism since being kidnapped into US chattel slavery, e.g., by Slave Owners, US & State Laws, Klan, Skin Heads, Domestic Nazis, Lynching, denial of rights, national oppression, racism, character assassination, historically, and at this very minute throughout the US. The relevance of this to Bush call for a “War on Terrorism”, is that Black people feel we have always been victims of terror, governmental and general, so we cannot get as frenzied and hysterical as the people who while asking us to dismiss our history and contemporary reality to join them, in the name of a shallow “patriotism” in attacking the majority of people in the world, especially people of color and in the third world. This is said to us, even as this counterfeit president has legalized the Confederate Flag in Mississippi. Could the victims of European Fascism be as frantically loyal to a regime that would fly a Nazi Swastika over their homes? So we cannot, in good conscience, celebrate what seems to us an international crusade to set up a military dictatorship over the world, legitimised at base, by white supremacy, carried out, no matter the crude lies, as the most terrifying form of Imperialism and its attendant national oppression. All of it designed to drain super profits bluntly from the colored peoples of the world, but as well, from the majority of the peoples in the world. For all the frantic condemnations of Terror by Bush etc., as the single International Super Power, they are the most dangerous terrorists in the world!

Continue reading here: http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/amiri.html

 

Source: http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/amiri.html

Black History Highlights: Poets

Maya Angelou

In the late 1950’s Maya Angelou joined the Harlem Writer’s Guild. With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, she began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Published in 1970, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings received international acclaim made the bestseller list. The book was also banned in many schools during that time as Maya Angelou’s honesty about having been sexually abused opened a subject matter that had long been taboo in the culture. Later, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings would become a course adoption at college campuses around the world. With more than 30 bestselling titles, Maya Angelou has written 36 books.

ABOUT I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS

Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.

Get it here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/3924/i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings-by-maya-angelou/

 

Source: https://www.mayaangelou.com/

 

 

 

Mind Your Business

Mind Your Business

By Maurice Clifton Sr.

Copyright 2018

 

Who gives a F***?

Well, sometimes I do!!

But if you don’t…

Then what’s it to you?!!

 

“Why do you say that?”

Because that’s what I believe!

And if my opinion differs from yours,

does that mean that I’ve been deceived?

 

Questions, questions, questions!

People in everybody’s business but theirs!

Issues that ought to be talked about,

but no one in the world seems to care!

 

“Why did that white cop kill a black man?”

DUH!! ARE YOU FOR REAL?!!

Over a hundred died this week in Chicago!

But somehow you think it’s GOD’S WILL!!

 

Why do whites raise money for Africa?

And only send twenty-five percent of the gross!

Aren’t there families who are hungry in the ghetto….

who truly needs this money the most?!!

 

Why is healthcare free in poor countries,

but here they charge an arm and leg!

And Veterans who fought to protect us

are homeless, pander, and beg!!

 

Why did Trump win the election?

MAN THIS HAS TO BE A JOKE!!

But you still sitting around playing video games

and didn’t carry your butt to the POLLS TO VOTE!!

 

Why when a black open a business,

you grumble and don’t want to see him rise!!

Is it because he looks like the man in the mirror

and it’s him you truly DESPISE!!!

 

If everyone would MIND THEIR BUSINESS,

Then maybe they  have BUSINESS ON THEIR MIND!

 

STOP WORRYING WHAT OTHER FOLKS DO…

…AND REMOVE THE PLANK FROM YOUR OWN DAMN EYES!!

 

MIND YO’ BUSINESS!!!

Dark Matter

Dark Matter
By: James Stevahn
Copyright 2018

I do not like to sleep

my brain does not rest

its where the nightmares creep

to much to digest

No one to confide

my heart will never mend

In my silence I do hide

I’d kill for a true friend

No one can really know

all the sins of my past

of all the baggage that I tow

I hope I can last

There are things not said out loud

no way out of this cloud

The Root

By Kenya Garrick

Copyright 2018

Young tender seed.

Water and dirt is what you need.

As the water sprinkle down,

life burst from the inside out.

Your roots begin to sprout.

They spread through the

foundation of the earth.

Every eye could see this is a new birth.

You grew from a weed into a tree.

Farmers came and cut you down.

Life has stopped without a clue.

Awe… they didn’t pull the root.

They only took the body they could see.

Guess what my friend!!..

Your roots can grow a new tree.

Life still exist in thee.

Black History Highlights: Poets

Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni is one of America’s foremost poets. Over the course of a long career, Giovanni has published numerous collections of poetry—from her first self-published volume Black Feeling Black Talk (1968) to New York Times best-seller Bicycles: Love Poems (2009)—several works of nonfiction and children’s literature, and multiple recordings, including the Emmy-award nominated The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection (2004). Her most recent publications include Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (2013) and, as editor, The 100 Best African American Poems (2010). A frequent lecturer and reader, Giovanni has taught at Rutgers University, Ohio State University, and Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Professor.

 

Nikki-Rosa
By Nikki Giovanni

childhood remembrances are always a drag

if you’re Black

you always remember things like living in Woodlawn

with no inside toilet

and if you become famous or something

they never talk about how happy you were to have

your mother

all to yourself and

how good the water felt when you got your bath

from one of those

big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in

and somehow when you talk about home

it never gets across how much you

understood their feelings

as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale

and even though you remember

your biographers never understand

your father’s pain as he sells his stock

and another dream goes

And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that

concerns you

and though they fought a lot

it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference

but only that everybody is together and you

and your sister have happy birthdays and very good

Christmases

and I really hope no white person ever has cause

to write about me

because they never understand

Black love is Black wealth and they’ll

probably talk about my hard childhood

and never understand that

all the while I was quite happy

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48219/nikki-rosa

Black History Highlights: Poets

Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an African-American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.

 

To Be in Love
By Gwendolyn Brooks

To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too.
He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or a light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is overmuch.
Too much to bear.
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
When he
Shuts a door-
Is not there_
Your arms are water.
And you are free
With a ghastly freedom.
You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.
You remember and covet his mouth
To touch, to whisper on.
Oh when to declare
Is certain Death!
Oh when to apprize
Is to mesmerize,
To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.

 

Source: https://kristentwardowski.wordpress.com/2016/08/14/poetry-sunday-gwendolyn-brookss-to-be-in-love/

Black History Highlights: Poets

Langston Hughes

A poet, novelist, fiction writer, and playwright, Langston Hughes is known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties and was important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance.

 

Dreams

Langston Hughes, 1902 – 1967

Hold fast to dreams 
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

 

Source: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/dreams