Harlem ain't Harlem no mo'

Harlem ain't Harlem no mo'

Marvin X in Harlem, 1968

photo Doug Harris

Harlem reception for Marvin X at home of Rashidah Ismaili, 2014

Chapbook published in Harlem, 1968, while the poet lived underground but openly while being sought by the FBI.
photo Doug Harris

Fly to Allah, poems, chapbook is beginning of the genre Muslim American literature
in modern times, according to Islamic scholar Mohja Kahf, et al., published during the Black Arts Movement in Harlem, 1968, where Marvin X was living underground because the FBI was searching for him as a draft resister to the war in Vietnam. After two self-imposed exiles, he was deported from Belize, then British Honduras, and imprisoned at Terminal Island Federal, San Pedro California.
photo Doug Harris

Harlem Ain't Harlem no mo'

Harlem ain't Harlem no mo'
Colonialists out the closet
No Charlie Rangel and friends neo-colonialism
$7,000 shoes Rangel neo-colonialism
Harlem ain't Harlem
was it ever really
wasn't black owned back in the day
City of New York owns Harlem
owns housing
owns Schomburg Library
Why don't Oprah buy it
P Diddy Jay Z Beyonce'
Greatest black library in world
owned by the owners who ain't the owners
AB would say
don't steal my lines Marvin X
OK AB dancing in heaven with Maya and Toni

Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou dancing over ashes of Langston Hughes at Schomburg Library

Harlem hotel ain't Harlem
white music blasting
no jazz black classical Duke
Basie Ella Billie
white music hotel
white man in elevator say
where you going
he wanna push my button
No, where you going white man
that's question
push yo' button
get yo ass outta here
leave keys South Africans tell Afrikaners
acting like you own the place
oh, you do! excuse me neo-Harlemites
Dutch Masters are here again
I'm just visitor from Cali
we don't own shit in Cali
No Fillmore no West Oakland
no land in greatest agricultural valley since Hapi River/Nile
But we new Negroes Pan African Kemites
King Tut's children
Where our golden chair spoon
where our royal crown
Ain't Harlem
Even Sylvia's owned by them other owners who ain't real owners, AB say
ain't slavery sweet by any other name
post black slavery
slavery in black
black lives matter slavery
black power slavery
negro politician slavery
after Gary Convention 72'
elected slavery
consent of governed slavery
black master slavery
ain't slavery sweet
hangman black
slavery sweet
we love black hangman
better'n white hangman right
white man ice colder right
Harlem ain't Harlem
never was
we was there and not there
in the body
soul in Africa
did best we can
still doin' best we can
always doin' best we can
and ain't doin' shit
what Last Poets say
Partying and bullshittin' partying and bullshittin'
Harlem ain't Harlem
white men work in Harlem
negro on corner
white men work in Harlem
negro work on Riker's Island
where you at Harlem
Garvey Harlem Malcolm Harlem
Queen Mother Moore Harlem
Langston Hughes Harlem
If We Must Die Claude McKay Harlem
Sonia Toni Barbara Ann Teer Harlem
Toni Cade Bambara June Jordan Nikki Harlem
Sun Ra Mildford Graves Alvin Ayler Pharoah Sanders Harlem
Ed Bullins Askia Toure Robert MacBeth Sonny Jim Harlem
Will you rise again Harlem
through Door of No Return
see that door
git yo ass through dat door daughter say to me
she gone from Harlem
couldn't afford house in Harlem
she gone to Ghana
5,000 North American Africans in Ghana
through Door of No Return
Africa forever
America never.
--Marvin X
2/6/20
Harlem, NY