Vol. II, In the Crazy House Called Amerikkka

photo Kamau Amen Ra RIP/graphics Mical Free

As I enjoy my 78th b day, I'm thinking about the last books I want to get out, and since a book of essays can have any title, I'm thinking hard about publishing Vol. 2, In the Crazy House Called Amerikkka. Current events call to mind what James Baldwin told me when I interviewed him at his New York apartment, that cold winter of 1968. He was without heat! But he said, "The murder of my child will not make your child safe." In truth, I'm not sure if he said this in one of his essays, but I know for sure he said to me: "It's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad. It's a miracle for a black father to raise a son under these circumstances but we did it time after time."

Marvin X, Harlem, 1968

photo Doug Harris

James Baldwin, NYC, cerca 1968

Vol. 2 will include my most recent essays on our social psychology, but include global sexuality, myths and rituals in the present era. But of critical importance is our mental condition.  Of course Dr. Nathan Hare, in his foreword to my mental health 13 Step Manual, deconstructed addiction to white supremacy type I and II. The oppressor suffers Type I and the Oppressed Type II. In our Black Reconstruction mental health peer group that included Dr. Hare and Suzzette Celeste, MSW, MPA, we held peer group meetings on how to recover from the addiction to white supremacy. Read Dr. Hare's Foreword to How to Recover.....and Suzzette Celeste's Introduction to In the Crazy House Called America, ( now Vol. I.).

As per mental health in America and the world, let's cut to the chase. For sure, we don't need to be a certified mental health worker to observe and describe the traumatic and horrific conditions before our eyes, unless we are Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, and even they can see better than most of us with 20/20 vision. Check out Ray's lyrics in The Danger Zone. And you may be safer riding with Stevie than some of your friends in their mind-altered states. 

You will probably agree with me that the nut who killed ten people at the store in Buffalo did not feel supreme, nor did the young man who killed 21 people, including 19 children, in Uvalde, feel supreme.

We should never refer to them as white supremacists, they are among those suffering the most severe mental illness, usually labeled a psychosis, i.e., a total break with reality.

But what did the police suffer in their mental paralysis, no matter their training? Remember Attorney Berry Scheck in the O.J. Simpson trail, "Something is very very wrong here!"

Why did the police suffer mental and physical paralysis when the moment of truth occurred?

Was your mental apparatus overcome with fear while the babies called 911 for help?

But let's go back to Baldwin, "The murder of my child will not make your child safe!"  After passing the $700 billion annual defense budget by both political parties, along with the $40 billion arms sent to Ukraine, and you think there is no come back. Yes, we know you don't believe what goes around comes around. So you mourn the 21 in Uvalde, the 10 in Buffalo and the uncountable in Chicago every weekend.

The murder of children is global. How many did you kill in Palestine this week? How many for flying the Palestinian flag, for your Zionist state murder of Shireen Abu Akleh? 

And you are not mentally ill? Which one: mild, moderate or severe? But sick to one degree or another, from neurosis to psychosis, take your pick. 

After Covid, we cannot imagine how many of you suffer obsessive compulsive neurosis, from wearing your filthy masks and washing your filthy hands and submitting to lockdowns that forced you to think about your lives for the first time.

continued

--Marvin X

5/29/44

Letter to Lothario on the other side of Paradise

Letter to Lothario Lotho on the other side of Paradise

Lotho, you were angry with me for not attending your mother's furneral, Margo Norman. I ask you to forgive me, Lotho, even though I knew of Margo Norman before I knew you.

I remember your mother was in the plays of Ed Bullins at the Firehouse Theatre in San Francisco, circa 1966, just prior to Ed and I founding Black Arts West Theatre on Fillmore Street in SF.

I told you when you came by Academy of da Corner that I was exhausted from attending funerals, although I will do my best to attend yours. Hell, I am trying to miss my funeral, how you like that?

But, Lo, I want you to know we love you, especially that dramatic spirit Margo Norman put in you, that made you love the stage. Actually, how could you help yourself, it was in your DNA.

We thank you for the role you played at UC Berkeley in the struggle to de-colonize the University, you along with Carl Mack, Arthur Jenkins, Fahizah, Nisa, Roy Thomas, Charlie Brown, Umtu Wa Haki, Betty Brumfield, and those before you who set the stage for the inclusion of African American Studies at UCB.

We thank you for the thousands of concerts you served as master of ceremonies, doing your best to energize the crowd with poetic lines of rhyme. So rhyme to us now Lotho, let us hear your song from Paradise calling us home through the door of no return.

We love you, Lotho, take it slow, and don't be on the down low!

We hope you enjoyed your thousand wives and that they loved you unconditionally.

Your brother for eternity,

Marvin X

Surely we are from Allah and to Him we return, Al Qur'an.