John Gilmore and Sun Ra

Marvin X's Great Grandfather, Former Slave, Dies on Madera Ranch

Former Negro Slave Dies on Madera Ranch

Ephraim Murrill, 99, who lived the first twenty years of his life as a Negro slave in North Carolina, died yesterday in his home on a Madera district ranch. Murrill, who was highly respected by both whites and Negroes in the community, recalled having seen Abraham Lincoln when the great emancipator was campaigning for his first term as president.

Surviving him are one daughter, Mrs. J. H. Hall, Madera; a son, John Murrill, Fowler; nine grand children and three great grandchildren. He would be 100 years old had he lived until next February 13. One of his brothers lived to the age of 116.

Funeral services will be held tomorrow afternoon in the Jay Parlors and burial will be in Arbor Vitae Cemetery.

--Fresno Bee, Tuesday, December 16, 1941

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 Fresno Bee photo of Marvin X during his struggle to lecture in Black Studies at Fresno State University, 1969

Parents of Marvin X, Marian Murrill Jackmon and Owendell Jackmon I

 

Marvin X. Jackmon, born May 29, 1944

 

Ephraim Murrill is the maternal great grandfather of poet/philosopher Marvin X. His mother, Marian Murrill Jackmon, was born in Fowler, about thirty miles south of Madera. Marvin X was born there as well, May 29, 1944. Marvin's parents, Owendell Jackmon and Marian published the first black newspaper in the central valley, the Fresno Voice. They were also real estate brokers who sold many blacks their first homes after WWII.

The Jackmons later moved to Oakland and became florists on 7th Street. Mr. Jackmon was prominent in West Oakland's political and social life. He was a member of the Men of Tomorrow, the Elks Lodge and the American Legion. He was a member of Downs Memorial Methodist Church. Mrs. Jackmon became a Christian Scientist, follower of Mary Baker Eddy.

Mrs. Jackmon later returned to Fresno with her children and opened a real estate business. In 1969, Marvin X became the most controversial black in Fresno history when he defied Governor Ronald Reagan by continuing to teach at Fresno State University, even though the Gov. ordered the college/now university to remove him by any means necessary, especially since he had refused to fight in Vietnam.

According to Marvin X's student and colleague, Ptah Allah El, his great grandfather is one of the legendary men of the Central Valley. He and Col. Allenworth may have been associates. After Col. Allenworth, Murrill is the most prominent black man in the central valley. Something about him crossed the line separating blacks and whites. Negroes in the Valley know about Epharaim Murrill. According to Ptah Allah El, Ephraim Murrill  was well known in Madera, Fresno, Fowler, Hanford, Lemoore. He was a conscious black man.

Marvin X's  cousin Mrs. Latanya Tony (wife of FSU chemistry professor emeritus Joe Tony)  is researching family history.

Black Bird Press News & Review: Review of How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy

Black Bird Press News & Review: Review of How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy:

 

 In the great tradition of indigenous healers, Dr. M pours love into patients inspiring hope for a cure for what others have deemed the only reality. Like all scientists, Dr. M is experimenting, hoping that patients will actively involve themselves in their recovery. The "peer group mental health model" accompanies the book and allows the reader to form their own circle to undergo transformation with friends, family, or those people you haven't met yet. Starting a much needed dialogue, Dr. M brings forward "5000 watts" of shock therapy to awake people to their senses.

13 Steps to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy

13 Steps

Step 1: We are not powerless over self-hatred, racism white supremacy thinking but our lives have become unmanageable.

Step 2: We have come to believe that a power within ourselves can restore us to sanity.

Step 3: We have made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.

Step 4:We shall make a searching and fearless moral inventory.

Step 5: Admitted to God within and without the exact nature of our wrongs.

Step 6: We are entirely ready to have God remove defects of character.

Step 7: We humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings.

Step 8: Make a list of all Africans and others we have harmed.

Step 9: Make direct amends to such people.

Step 10: Continue to take personal inventory.

Step 11: Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God.

Step 12: Carry the message to the Pan African world and other humans in the global community.

Step 13: Discover Pan African consciousness and join the cultural revolution.

Meeting format to recover from the addiction to white supremacy type II

 

Based on the book by Dr. M (Marvin X) How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, foreword by Dr. Nathan Hare, afterword by Ptah Allah El (Tracy Mitchell),
Black Bird Press, Berkeley CA, 2008.

The facilitator should use this format to stay focused in a timely manner, to maintain order and yet allow for the free expression on the people. This meeting is thus a sacred space and time for people to vent and begin the long process of recovery from addiction to white supremacy/lunacy. Anyone can, should and must become a meeting facilitator.



1. Welcome. Welcome to the Pan African Mental Health Peer Group to recover from the addiction to white supremacy/lunacy. My name is ___________________. I am recovering from the adduction to white supremacy.

2. Group response: Hotep, Salaam_________________.

3. I am your facilitator for this meeting. Please join me in prayer and medication, especially for all those persons suffering from the addiction to white supremacy around the world. . I will read the poem What If on page 97 of our text.

4. Definition of White Supremacy: a form of domination and exploitation. White supremacy can be in white face, black face, or any other color, male or female. White supremacy is a drug so pervasive that even when we think we are cured, the ravages and residue appear, affecting our thinking and behavior, social relations and interaction in the home, on the job, at religious worship, social and cultural events. In short, this drug is sometimes tasteless, colorless, yet cunning and vile. We think we are cured, yet a slip of the tongue proves the illness has reappeared, often suddenly without the slightest indication.

5. Will a volunteer please read the Thirteen Steps taken from our text. See table of contents.

6. A telephone list is being circulated; please add your name, address, phone and email. Indicate if you are available to mentor another brother or sister in recovery from white supremacy. Please take numbers if you wish. The telephone is a means of gaining the needed support from each other between meetings. Email also.

7. Donations. It is now time for donations since we cannot support our recovery without the proper finances to sustain the meeting such as rent, printing of literature, refreshments and the like. However, just give what you can.

8. Check-in. The meeting is open for check-in. Please limit your talk to five minutes so everyone gets a chance to share. In this meeting we discourage cross talk. Cross talk is defined as commenting, interrupting, criticizing or giving advice on another person’s share. We need a safe and supportive place to discuss our feelings and cross talk can be very hurtful and humiliating. Thank you. Who would like to begin the check-in?

9. Someone volunteer to read the Step of the present meeting.

10. Speaker. At this time I would like to introduce the speaker who will talk for twenty minutes on the present Step.

11. Discussion. The session is now open for discussion and comments.

12. Closing prayer. Read Step 7, page 78 or any prayer you desire.

13. Next meeting date and any reading assignments.

For more information or to invite Marvin X to establish a Pan African mental health peer group in your community, please call 510-200-4164, email jmarvinx@yahoo.com.

Detoxing from White Supremacy Type II

Detoxing White Supremacy

Prior to our attempt at recovery from the effects of the addiction to white supremacy, we need to consider detoxification, to rid the body and mind from the toxicity of decades under the influence of racist ideology and institutions that have rendered us into a state of drunkenness and denial. Many of us are convinced we have no problem with racism and/or white supremacy. Some say we love everyone, but would not be pleased with our son or daughter marrying out of the ethnic group. There are those of us who think Africans or Caribbean blacks or Mexicans are taking all the jobs, all the housing, although many of the jobs we would not consider doing, much of the housing being occupied by Latinos we consider too ghetto to live in. So we suffer clouded thinking or stinking thinking as they say in the drug recovery community.

In short, we need to detox to clear our minds in preparation for the recovery process. Detox may involve some form of isolation and meditation, any method that would separate us from society, including friends and family that have been the cause of our psychosis, that break with reality that has our life confounded and delusional. We may need a radical dietary change as many of the foods have a negative bio-chemical effect on our thinking and hence actions. It could be the white sugar, white flour, hormone fed beef and chicken, mercury filled fish, genetically altered fruits and vegetables that we need to eliminate from our diet so we can think with a better chemical balance, especially as it affects our central nervous system. Perhaps we should spend a week or two or three in retreat from the stress of daily life so we can ponder the ill effects of our thinking on social interaction, so we can relax and seriously consider the recovery program that awaits us. Some may want to fast and/or pray while in the detox stage, but hard thinking is in order before peer group interaction. For sure there will be denial, arrogance and superior attitudes, even feelings of inferiority may be expressed, so let’s do some preparation and self thought before we expose ourselves to group thought, then perhaps we can enter the group with more confidence and seriousness. Let us prepare to rid our minds of thoughts that engender hatred in the family, in the community, nation and global village. We must consider not only the humanity of each other but our divinity. As my poem What If says, “What if God is the brother you hate, the sister you hate, the mother and father you hate, the dope fiend you hate, the Mexican you hate, the African you hate, the Jamaican you hate, the so-called Negro you hate, the white man you hate, what if what if what if….”

Finally, detoxing from white supremacy should prepare us to consider the economic system that has brought so much pain and suffering to the world, especially to the majority that has not benefited from the blessings of the so-called free market system that seeks cheap labor and the production of cheap goods for the consumer driven economy. We should detox from the desire to possess things upon things for no other reason than greed and selfishness. We should consider that most of the world has no electricity or clean drinking water. The citizens of America should consider why they are only 4% of the population yet consume 25% of the world’s energy. Consider what feelings of anger this might engender in the poor and dispossessed around the world, and why they may want to attack America who cares nothing about them except as sources of cheap labor, cheap natural resources and markets to expand capitalist or imperialist domination, otherwise known as white supremacy.
--Marvin X

from How to Recover from the addiction to White Supremacy, a 13 step manual for a Pan African Mental Health Peer Group, Dr. M (Marvin X), Black Bird Press, Berkeley, CA, 2007, $19.95. Order direct from the publisher: Black Bird Press, 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702

Fresno ready to recover from the addiction to white supremacy type II!

 

The North American Africans in Fresno, CA appear ready to recover from the addiction to white supremacy type II. According to remarks made at the Kwanza celebration at the African American Museum, the president of the local chapter of the NAACP, Pamela Young-King, will invite Marvin X to set up a workshop series based on his book How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, a manual for a 13 step mental health peer group. It was the consensus of those present at Kwanza that there is a pressing community need to detox and recover from the vicious and cunning virus of white supremacy type II as defined by Dr. Nathan Hare in his foreword to Dr. M's manual:

 Much in the manner of Hegel in his essay on “Master and Slave,” Marvin senses that the oppressor distorts his own mind as well as the mind of the oppressed. Hence Type I and Type II White Supremacy Addiction. White sociologists and the late black psychologist, Bobby Wright, converged in their findings of pathological personality traits (“the authoritarian personality” and “the racial psychopathic personality,” as Bobby put it).

But if Hegel was correct in his notion that the oppressor cannot free the slave, that the slave must force the oppressor’s hand, then it is Type II White Supremacy Addiction which if not more resistant to cure, must occupy our primary focus. Type II White Supremacy may be seen as a kind of “niggeritis” or “Negrofication” growing out of an over-identification with the master, who is white. As in any disorder severity of symptoms may vary from mild to moderate or severe.  

As Frantz Fanon put it when he spoke for the brother with jungle fever in Black Skin, White Mask: “I wish to be regarded as white. If I can be loved by the white woman who is loved by the white man, then I am white like the white man; I am a full human being.” In the twisted mental convolution of a brother in black skin behind a white mask, Fanon observed a “Negro dependency complex” independently chronicled in my own Black Anglo Saxons (black individuals with white minds in black bodies). They struggle to look, think, talk and walk white by day, then go to sleep at night and dream that they will wake up white. They refuse to realize that no matter what they may ever do they will never get out of the black race alive.

On the other hand, you are going to be seeing “nouveau blacks” and lesser Afrocentrics -- who faithfully and unquestionably follow twelve-month years and endeavor even to blackenize the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ -- jumping up to question Dr. M’s re-africanization of the “Twelve Steps” model for “using the Eurocentric twelve steps,” but they forget  that the very effort to be practical and collective is the original African way.  In any event, we must build on whites as whites have built on us, taking the best of the West and leaving the rest alone.  But Dr. M has expressly and creatively added a thirteenth step; for his goal is not just recovery but discovery, his goal is not just to change the individual but to change the individual to get ready to change the world. --Dr. Nathan Hare, PhD.

The North American Africans of Fresno will be invited to register for the 13 week workshop during Marvin X's appearance in Fresno on Saturday, February 22, 3pm at the Hinton Center.  The NAACP with host a reading and conversation with the poet/essayist/philosopher who is called Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland (Ishmael Reed), the USA's Rumi (Bob Holman), Mark Twain (Rudolph Lewis), the new Malcolm X (Jerri Lange).

On February 28, March 1-2, 2014, Marvin X will co-produce, along with Kim McMillan, a conference on the Black Arts Movement ( the most radical artistic and literary movement in American history) at the University of California, Merced.


For more information call 510-200-4164, email Marvin X at jmarvinx@yahoo.com.

 

 

 

 

Amiri Baraka condition improving, please continue prayring for our beloved poet, activist, scholar, organizer

 

By Richard Khavkine/The Star-Ledger The Star-Ledger    
December 27, 2013 at 12:38 AM, updated December 27, 2013 at 12:38 PM

 

The poet and playwright Amiri Baraka, who was hospitalized in critical condition earlier this week, was said to be improving. Baraka is pictured at a panel discussion at the Newark Museum in 1999.Matt Rainey/NJNP Photo 

NEWARK — Amiri Baraka, the former New Jersey poet laureate who was hospitalized in critical condition earlier this week, is improving, according to a spokesman for his son, Newark Councilman Ras Baraka.

“He continues to improve,” the spokesman, Frank Baraff, said by email early this morning. “His condition is not dire.”
Baraka, 79, was hospitalized Monday. Lawrence Hamm, the state chairman of the People's Organization for Progress, said the poet, author and playwright had been taken to the intensive care unit at Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark.
Citing the family’s request for privacy, Baraff declined to say why Baraka had been hospitalized.
Baraka, a Newark native formerly known as LeRoi Jones, was the state's poet laureate in 2002 and 2003. He was the last to hold the post, which was abolished during his tenure after he wrote "Somebody Blew Up America," a poem about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that was alternately praised for its frankness and criticized for what others called its anti-Semitic content.
Asked to resign by then-Gov. James McGreevey, Baraka refused. The state Legislature abolished the laureate post, effectively removing him.
Last month, the 50th anniversary of Baraka’s “Blues People,” a history of music from the time of slavery throughout the various incarnations of blues and jazz, was celebrated as part of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center's TD Moody Democracy of Jazz Festival.

Marvin X fires up crowd at Fresno Kwanza Celebration

Marvin X made a rare public appearance in his central valley hometown of Fresno last night. His talk on Umoja or unity stressed the need for a unified mental apparatus as the prerequisite for uniting the family, community and nation. He was introduced by Professor emeritus of Black Studies at Fresno City College, Kehindi Solwazi. Professor Solwzi told the crowd how he read Dr. M's How to Recover from the Addiction to white supremacy and was blown away, especially by the poet's self criticism, so rare these days. He urged the people to purchase the book and they did.

In his remarks, Marvin X first asked the audience to pray for his friends Amiri Baraka and Dr. Julia Hare. Baraka is hospitalized and Julia Hare is suffering third stage Alzheimer's. Marvin X has long been associated with Dr. Nathan Hare, sociologist, psychologist and founding publisher of the Black Scholar magazine and Black Male/female magazine. Marvin told the folks gathered on a cold valley night that if they can get pass Dr. Hare's foreword to How to Recover they will have no problems with his manual, a 13 step process to recover from white supremacy type II as Dr. Hare calls our condition. Once we detox from white supremacy type II we can begin the long road to recovery of our  mental equilibrium. We cannot unite with anyone while the self is shattered and traumatized.

If you can get off alcohol, crack, meth and other drugs, you can recover from white supremacy type II. There are not enough Dr. Hare's to go around and many of the black psychologists are certified by white supremacy academic institutions thus the black doctors are in need of recovery themselves. He said many of them are now getting certified in African healing methods.

Fear of the self is prolonging our condition. We fear self and fear others so there can be no unity of any kind without eliminating fear which is the first step in the process of recovery from white supremacy type II. We must establish mental health peer groups in our community.

In the peer groups Dr. Nathan Hare and Marvin X facilitated along with social worker Suzzette Celeste called Black Reconstruction, the woman were found to be the most angry and the most militant. Brothers were afraid to say they had fears but when probed they finally admitted they had a plethora of fears. He's scared of himself, his woman, his children, another brother and of course the white man.

The small crowd was overjoyed with his remarks. He is scheduled to appear in Fresno during Black History Month at Fresno City College and in the community at Hinton Center. His Hinton Center appearance is sponsored by the Fresno Chapter of the NAACP, Pamela Young, President.

February 28, March 1-2, he will present at the Black Arts Movement Conference, University of
California, Merced. East Coast people can catch Marvin X at New York University, February 4 at the tribute for ancestor poet Jayne Cortez. To book Marvin X, please call 510-200-4164. Email: jmarvinx@yahoo.com.

Will the Black Arts Movement outdo Michelle Obama at UC Merced

When the Black Arts Movement Conference happens at UC Merced, Feb. 28 thru March 2, 2014, we wonder will the BAM folks get the turn out folks gave the First Lady? Probably not, but the BAM conference will be one of the largest gathering of North American Africans in Merced history.

It will be an event of critical importance as well, setting the stage for the 50th anniversary of BAM, the most radical literary and artistic movement in American history, featuring many of the founders, including Amiri Baraka, aka LeRoi Jones, Askia Toure, Sonia Sanchez, Marvin X, Roscoe Mitchell and others associated with BAM such as Ishmael Reed and Al Young.

For sure, BAM was a Black Nationalist movement inspired by the Nation of Islam, very similar to the Harlem Renaissance that was motivated by the Marcus Garvey Movement. There are those who will try to paint BAM as multicultural, but that came later, a result of BAM's impact on other ethnic groups and especially upon white academia. BAM was the root cause of American academia deciding to include non-white radical literature in its curriculum. Of course the effort was Miller Lite in the form of Black Studies and other ethnic and gender studies. BAM must now pass the baton to the next generation, i.e., the Black Power Babies and the Hip Hop generation, especially the conscious hip hop people.

We congratulate sister Kim McMillan and especially the University of California, Merced for deciding to produce this conference. We are already talking about a national tour to celebrate the 50th anniversary of BAM.
--Marvin X, co-producer 

Michelle Obama inspires UC Merced graduates

Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, May 17, 2009

• 
  First Lady Michelle Obama delivers the commencement speech to the first full graduating class of UC Merced on Saturday, May 16, 2009 in Merced, Calif. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

They loved her, she loved them, and in the admiration-fest between Michelle Obama and the graduating class of UC Merced, the first lady of the United States exhorted them to go out and use their newfound skills to help those most in need.

"Remember that you are blessed," Obama told the crowd seated before her on the only big field the fledgling campus can muster, a grassy plain set beneath a scorching midday sun. "You must bend down and let someone stand on your shoulders so they can see a better future."

Obama reminded them that, like half of the student body at this 4-year-old campus, she was the first in her family to attend college. And she urged the 500 graduates, who constitute the first class to go from freshman to senior year at UC Merced, to seek jobs where they help disadvantaged children in particular. Help those, she said, "who never go to college ... who can't get a break ... who have lost the ability to dream."

And if not that, she said, find work innovating green technology or doing other things to kick-start the nation's wobbling economy.

"We are going to need all of you graduates," Obama said. "Make your legacy a lasting one. Dream big."

Mindful that she was speaking in one of the most economically depressed cities in California, the first lady also warned the Class of 2009 that times are tough out there. Instead of a welcoming job market, she said, the graduates are likely to find low salaries, daunting loan repayment bills and "your share of setbacks."

"But in those moments, in those inevitable moments, I urge you to think about this day," she said. "Look around you. ... Never let setbacks or fear dictate the course of your life."

The first lady's 29-minute commencement speech, delivered to the parents, visitors and students with a forceful, building crescendo that hit climaxes akin to a preacher's sermon, couldn't have fallen on more receptive ears.

"Awesome. Everything she said about struggling and motivation applied to myself," said freshman Rogelio Grijalva of Fairfield. "Sometimes I think, 'Man, I'm not going to make it.' And now whenever I feel that way, I'll think about what she said.

"She relates, you can tell," he said, shaking his head almost reverently.

The student body had launched a full-court press last winter to lure Obama to UC Merced, sending her thousands of letters and Valentines and posting come-on-over videos online. Their message was that the 2,718 widely diverse, mostly modest-income students who attend UC's newest campus are fervent about public service, and that she and the president embody the feisty can-do attitude they believe they bring to their own pursuit to uplift themselves and those around them.

On Saturday, as her ascendance to the stage brought the class leaping to its feet, screaming and pumping fists in the air, Obama's beaming smile and wave indicated that she had taken their pleas fully to heart.

"All I can say is, 'Wow,' " Obama told them. "A few people may be wondering: Why did I choose the University of California in Merced to deliver my first commencement speech as first lady? Well, let me tell you something. The answer is simple: You inspired me. You touched me."

A tiny campus of just three main buildings, UC Merced glistened for its big moment with fresh paint and landscaping. The walkways were scrubbed to a shine, eager students set up booths on the quad to tout their favorite causes - for example, volunteering for local children's clubs - and a Mariachi band blared bouncy tunes into the quad.

The field where the gigantic stage was erected for Obama's speech is usually a haven called "The Bowl" where Frisbees and lounging lunch-takers rule. But with 12,000 people seated on it Saturday - 10,000 more than were expected before Obama was booked - the grass and everything around it took on a solemn, distinguished tone that students and faculty hope will carry through for years.

"Michelle Obama's speech here shows everyone, now and forever, that our hard work paid off," said graduating psychology major Alvina Bueno. "And it was hard work."

The day dawned hot and got hotter, and by the time the thermometer flirted with a bone-dry 100 degrees around noon, everyone was swigging water bottles like tipplers at a free bar.

The air-conditioned portable toilets on the sun-blasted commencement field, where people were confined by Secret Service agents for hours once they entered, were jammed with people looking not only for relief, but a few minutes of cool.

It was one day when Obama's much-touted tendency to wear sleeveless clothing would have come in handy - but alas, she had to wear a ceremonial robe for her speech.

"A lot of people from the Bay Area aren't used to this heat, but for us in the Central Valley this is nothing," said junior Elizabeth Kang, who helped hand out 1,000 water bottles by lunchtime. "We call this nice weather."

The same ebullience that greeted Obama on campus spilled into nearby Merced, a dusty cattle town hard hit by foreclosures and chiefly known for the gas stations you pull into en route to Yosemite Park on Highway 140. But this week, its overlooked charms of say-howdy friendliness and pride in its world-class UC campus have outshone all other attributes.

A downtown festival, dubbed Cap & Town, Friday and Saturday packed the streets with thousands of visitors who happily strapped themselves into round metal cages to become human bowling balls at one booth, gobbled Indian and Mexican food at other booths, and sat with toddlers in hand in the middle of Main Street to watch "Finding Nemo" on a JumboTron.

"This is going to give me material to paint forever," gushed local artist Becky Wilson, sipping beer at the Partisan bar while a rock group blared Badfinger cover songs on the street outside. "You remember Jackie O? Michelle's the same thing. There's never been anything bigger than this in Merced. Ever!"

Kiss My Black Arts

Inspired by Visual artist Rtystk #kissmyblackarts

Filled with soul
Colorful and vibrant
Alive
Divine creative flow
Black art is that rock and roll, hip hop
Jazz and R&B soul
Black art is Chuck berry, Little Richard and those that go unnamed
Black art is that cookout music
That holy ghost music
Gospel sung in churches without any Black faces
Black art is that spiritual that cracked your heart open and had you praying to your maker
Black Art is up in your face
That jungle fever, Niggas with Attitude
Don’t believe the hype and Do it in the butt
Black Art is that caged bird that sings and the coldest Winter Ever
That strange Fruit and Native Son
Black Art made you Lindy hop and wonder what’s going on?
Made you twist and shout
Black Art refuses to be “othered” and only “urban”
Hip hop your ass around the world
To see cyphers in native tongues
Pop locking, Harlem shaking back to their humanity
Black Arts is that Zora Neale Hurston Phillis Wheatley
Audre Lorde and those that go unnammed
Black art is Passionate , fiery and commands authority
Black Arts draws you in and is sexy
It is that Grace Jones, that Josephine Baker and Zane chronicles
Black art made you turn off the lights and get a sexual healing
Black art is the language of shizzles, rhythmic flows, finger snaps and skatting
Black art is history and present
Black art will tell the truth when everyone is lying
Black art is the voice of the people past and present
Really the closest thing to being Black without being Black
Black art will tell the truth when everyone is lying

Of Love, Life and Death in da Hood, a poem for AB, Julia and all of us in this life and the next

And Job said it best
naked I came and naked I go
ache
there is only one lesson to learn in this life
Nature Boy told us this
learn to love and be loved in return
all else illusion
money fame sex
momentary pleasures
ephemeral desires
diversions from the real
who can see through all the conundrums
across the precipice to the meta reality
only superman can stand tall
how many can persist from man to superman

J.A. Rogers asked and answered
one superman committed suicide
another fell from a horse
who is the real superman?
who has endured death a thousand times
crucified resurrected ascended
who is the black stone the builders rejected
who passed through the door of no return
yet returned to the motherland
no matter centuries later
a son came home
daughter too
ten thousand met them at the airport
twenty thousand at the compound of the high priest
prophesy fulfilled
Oh brother and sister
help us through the weary night

help us beyond poverty disease ignorance
help us transcend tribalism sectarianism dogmatism greedism corruptionism
state terror religious madness beyond all the prophets
Jesus Muhammad Buddha, even Marx and Lenin
help us walk from the dungeon to the upper room of our father's house
Come my daughter, walk with your king to his father's house
he has not defied righteousness
he has not defiled the gods
he has not disgraced the ancestors
he has not lied when the feather went on the scale of Ma-at
he has been a warrior for truth
he told no lies
so walk with your king
loving him unconditionally until the end of all things
that matter
no devotion to the trivial mundane provincial
fly with him into the midnight hour
rejoice
elders shall become ancestors
there is no escape
death is life and life is death
enjoy the holy days
and all days are holy
if we walk with the righteous
shun the scandalous
the rats snakes vermin

the terrible night is over
the dawn is upon us
let us dance sing shout wail.
--Marvin X
12/25/13