KPOO Terry Collins Memorial Celebration Part 1

 A Celebration of Life: The Legacy of Terry Collins

July 24th, 2021

          2:00-6:00pm PST

    Masters of Ceremony: Donald E. Lacy

***** We will start promptly at 2:15pm, as we are already giving a 15-min buffer*****

2:15-2:25pm: Libations………………………………………….. Brother Clint

2:25-2:30pm: Poem Reading…………………………….……...Tongo

2:30-2:40pm: Reading of Eulogy………………………………. Arnold Townsend

2:40-3:00pm: Special Remarks………………………………...

1. Rodnell Collins (5-min)

2. Nesbit Crutchfield (5-min)

3. Benny Stewart (5-min)

4. Judy Drummond (3-min)

3:00-3:30pm: Remarks………………………………………….. (2min max)

3:30-3:35pm: Dedications/Proclamations…………………….

1. KPOO (1-2min)

2. Mayor London Breed (1-2min)

3:35-3:40pm: Poem Reading…………………………………... Marvin X

3:40-3:45pm: Acknowledgements…………………………..… Collins Family

3:45-4:30pm: DJ playing music…. Food will be served, tables will be called

4:30-5:00pm: Musical Selection………………………………… Kaylah Marin

5:00-6:00pm: DJ playing music………………………………….. KPOO

*** KPOO will be live broadcasting

*** William Hammons will be live streaming the event on Youtube: https://youtu.be/njGxP5iKQ9w

• Terry Collins Memorial Celebration KPOO Part 1

  https://soundcloud.com/user-90412374/terry-collins-memorial-celebration-part-1?fbclid=IwAR0Rx5z4HQCJaR8YC0bTPu4GR9TvwBtapKKCm0WrRUEE_5p9xnvDfrYcPzQ

  Special Two-Hour Memorial Celebration of Terry Collins (Part 1 of 2)
  Hosted by Ida McCray and Arlene Eisen.
  For more than five decades, Terry was a beacon and mainstay of Bay Area resistance: leader of the SF State Strike (1968-69), Black Panther, Founder and President of KPOO-fm Community Radio, Stalwart defender of political prisoners. Part 1 of this celebration features
  Terry’s family, comrades and friends in order of appearance: 
  • Cat, Kiara and Renya Collins (Terry’s wife and daughters)
  • Nedzada Baldwin (Family friend)
  • Avotcja (KPOO programmer, poet, musician)
  • Donna Wilmott (Catalyst)
  • Lara Kiswani (Director of Arab Resource and Organizing Center)
  • Devorah Major (3rd Poet Laureate of San Francisco)

  ---

Part 4, Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience: Conversation with Dr. Ayodele Nzinga

Cornel West Explains Why He’s Leaving Harvard | The Mehdi Hasan Show

BAMFest 2021, Black August, Off the Record #3: Dr. Cornel West in Conversation with Marvin X

BAMBD F E S T #1 OFF THE RECORD: DR. AYODELE NZINGA INTERVIEWED BY MARVIN X

Parable of Tehuti walked among us in the Bay

 Parable of Tehuti

Art by Paradise Jah Love

Tehuti was a real being who walked and talked among us here in the Bay. He dressed in pharaonic dress head to toe. His presence was at almost every Black Kemetic event, sometimes silent, sometimes engaging in conversation with deep black consciousness roots, dirty south as we recall. But, most of all was his presence in pharaonic decorum, expressing his kemetic identity no matter what others thought. Tehuti made us bow down to our royal ancestors though his garb may have been of humble origins, yet it did not diminish or deny his royalty. 

He honored and respected me always until the end came near. In his last days he avoided me like I was the plague or had done something wrong to him, though such never happened. I couldn't under why he avoided me at every turn, especially since I had never wronged him in my mind. After Tehuti joined the ancestors, I continued trying to configure why he avoided me.

I wondered if he didn't know how to tell me he was going to the Upper Room. Did he want me to know? Did he know how to tell me good-bye? 

After his transition, I wondered if those in transition want us to know they are departing. I imagined there was shame and guilt in his heart. I imagined myself, when I know I am departing for sure, will I be gracious in my good-byes? Will I, in the manner of Tehuti, cross the street to avoid my friends saying good-bye because I love them so much.

Ya, Tehuti, I see you at every conscious event in the Bay, dressed in your Pharaonic attire as if you were on your throne. Perhaps you ruled that Black African 18th Dynasty, King Tut's time.

No mistake you were Black African Pharaonic King. Wasn't that the time of the heretic king

Akhenaton who gave us his prayer to the One God, ushering monotheism on the scene, soon come Judaism, Christianity and Islam. See Yusef Ali's translation of Al Qur'an, his notes on Akhenaton and his role in the development of monotheism. But, we think James Breasted in his classic The Dawn of Conscious, said it best for all times, "Monotheism is but imperialism in religion." Can you say it better than this? Alas, not only is monotheism imperialism in religion, but history, myth and ritual as well. Thus, he who dominates politically, militarily, economically, and spiritually, controls the narrative thus they dominate myth-ritual conversation. 

I end this conversation only to let you know Tehuti walked among us until he decided to avoid us as he entered the Upper Room. I have nothing else to tell you about Tehuti.

--Marvin X

7/17/21

Parable of the Fake

This situation is so deep to come out of it will be the true liberation of our people. Imagine a natural woman coming to embrace a natural man, imagine the children they will produce, no children with pants off their asses but conscious children steeped in Kemetic conscious knowledge, not pseudo whites in black face thinking they are beautiful in blond wigs, winking and blinking with eyelashes. Who give a fuck about eyelashes? Who give a fuck about a bitch's behind, I want to know what she got on her mind. Do you know you are the Original woman and your man is the Original Man? Do you know who the devil is, fuck critical race theory, Elijah told us the white man was the devil in 1930.

Fake women should mate fake men, don't connect with a real Black man and try to turn him into a fake. Further, if you want your Black man to be a white man in black face, i.e., dipped in chocolate, let him be his God given Black beautiful self, Divine, Righteous and Holy. Leave him the fuck alone as your drown in your Negrocities (Amiri Baraka term he told me not to steal. But I take liberty to define Negrocities as an inflammation at the base of the brain caused by bad habits. Of course in his class play A Black Mass, Baraka's metaphor was more poetic, "Where the soul's print should be there is only a cellulose pouch of disgusting habits!"

So please don't destroy the divinity of your Black man with your fake ass wanna be white bullshit. Alas, you do it to your daughters too, since they emulate you! Just as the Black man addicted to the world of make believe, destroys the manhood of his sons by going about his daily round with pants below his behind. This cultural quagmire is the critical lack of manhood and womanhood training. We, in our pseudo modernity, dismiss ancestral wisdom as primitive, archaic, yet their myths and rituals was the foundation of civilization for eons, millions of years. Mythologist Joseph Campbell says it best, i.e., the lack of manhood and womanhood training is seen in the morning news of black on black homicide, mass murder by marginalized youth, especially white boys.

Everybody wants to be somebody yet feel like nobody, no matter poor, middle class, millionaires, billionaires. Although the matter of fakism transcends black women as it is endemic in global society, Chris Hedges focused on the USA in his recent lecture on American Sadism that I agree with him is at the root of the pandemic of fakism, whether fake men, women, children; fake news, politics, education, economics, and most importantly the fake US military's eternal wars as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and the hundreds of US military bases around the world.

So leave the Black man alone in his pristine aboriginal purity. Go get you a real white man, blue eyes, blond hair just like yours! Let the real black man stay black so he can connect with a real black woman, queen of the universe, mother of civilization, warrior woman supreme., determined to save her black boys, even if she must do so singlehandedly since the black man must often take flight as Richard Wright said of him in Native Son, "His very presence is a crime against the state, every glance of his eye is a threat!"

In this drama Diop says can only be a tragi-comedy in the African tradition, stallions and donkeys don't go together. There must be Ma'at or balance as in steel sharpens steel!

Let donkeys connect with their kind, for sure a donkey will never win the Kentucky Derby! Let us all strive to come up from the low information vibration. WTF, it takes the same energy to be a donkey as it does to be a stallion! The fakers can do better except they are addicted to the world of make believe (Frazier, Hare, Fanon), White Supremacy, i.e., Lunacy, Type II (Hare, MX). The fakers are in critical need of experiencing neural placidity, an alteration of the brain cells from a new environment absent toxicity. Take a trip, swim in the. ocean, talk to trees, bees, birds.

--Marvin X

7/16/21

BAM F E S T 2021 Video part 4 Off the Record: Marvin X in Concert at the Black Repertory Group Theatre Berkeley

Poet-Playwright Marvin X, Co-Founder of the Black Arts Movement, performs

in Berkeley at the Black Repertory Group Theatre with his favorite artists, including 

percussionists Master Tacuma King and Kele Nitoto, Violinist Tarika Lewis, Destiny Muhammad, Harpist of the Hood and Raynetta Rayzetta, Marvin's beloved choreographer and dancer (RIP). "No one interpreted my poetry better than Raynetta. She choreographed movement for my every word. What more can a poet ask a dancer to do? Thank you Raynetta for listening to my words and translating them into dance movements. I cannot believe you are no longer with me to interpret my poetry. I feel lost without you, although I appreciate all the choreographers and dancers before and after you, Raymond Sawyer, Suzzeste Celeste, Jamilah Hunter, et al. 

I give special thanks to the percussionists, Master Tacuma King and his student Kele Nitoto.  I was humbled and honored when Tacuma King informed me he understood his role to complement me, not drown me out as some musicians seek to do when they have no appreciation of the spoken word and pursue egotism and narcissism, thus they care nothing for the sacred words.  

Of Violinist Tarika Lewis and Harpist Destiny Muhammad, they sooth the wild beast in my poetry with their healing string music. 

BAM FEST 2021, Off the Record, Interview with Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, part 2

BAN F E S T 2021 Video part 4 Off the Record: Marvin X in Concert at the Black Repertory Group Theatre, Berkeley

BAN F E S T 2021 Video part 4 Marvin X in Concert at the Black Repertory Group Theatre

Marvin X in Concert with his favorite artists: Percussionists Tacuma King

and Kele Nitoto, Violinest Tarika Lewis, Harpist Destiny Muhammad, Choreographer

dancer Raynetta Rayzetta. Opening remarks Suzzette Celeste. 

Crousin' Oakland, A poem I can't finish because the poem ain't finished with me

  

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Crusin' Oakland July 2021

Crousin' Oakland, A poem I can't finish because the poem ain't finished with me

 

photo Alicia Mayor

Marvin X returns to his classroom in the Laney College Theatre, aka Odell Johnson Theatre, opens for Donald Lacy's Color Struck. Marvin read from the scene in his play One Day in the Life, depicting his last meeting with his friend from Merritt College, 1962, Dr. Huey P. Newton, in a West Oakland Crack house. The play became a recovery community cult classic. After his drug recovery drama, Marvin went on to declare that if one can recover from drugs, one can recover from the addiction to white supremacy, alas, the CDC has declared white supremacy is the cause of the mental health epidemic. Now I am known for hyperbole, so let me say the CDC says mental health is epidemic. America appears to still suffer from denial that racism is systemic and the most critical factor of mental illness in America. The American response to Critical Race Theory is clear evidence she is not ready to enter the necessary long term recovery program that would allow neural placidity to occur, i.e., a change in the brain cells due to a changed environment. But let's be clear as Dr. Nathan Hare delineated in his Foreword to Marvin X's manual How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, "Whites suffer from addiction to white supremacy type I, blacks suffer from addiction to white supremacy type II, and do not mix the two!" Alas, how can the oppressor suffer the oppression of the man with the boot on his neck, as George Floyd suffered? We can't even comprehend the suffering of Officer Derek Chuvin. Perhaps white people can explain Chuvin's addiction to Type I white supremacy.  Was his addiction mild, moderate or severe?

 

 

 

Crusin' Oakland

 

Sunny July day in da bay

Gotta git ta north oakland

'fore chinese cleaners close

San Pablo Stanford

Chinese there before I born

Makin' millions off you know who

never hired nigga in hunid years

nigga don't care

he donkey of world

everybody rides a nigga to success

 

downstairs in my apartment building

latinx girl children scream hollar in play

everyday

didn't know girls screamed so loud

like a Sun Ra Arkestra John Gilmore

upper register sax sound

let the children scream

Haki said Don't Cry, Scream

 

Leave North Oakland to Westside

childhood turf

Defermery/Lil' Bobby Hutton Park

vendor tents baseball game

Shout to woman from my car

What's going on here

Police playin' West Oakland she say

I say wow ain't dat nice

Police playin West Oakland

yes it is, yes it is

I heard Mayor Libby and OPD Chief were gonna march today

maybe this was end of march

Baseball game with my westside peoples

Cruise down Adeline to 14th

BAMBD town (Black Arts Movement Business District)

Heard the anti-police terrorism project caravan to Lowell Park for "Pick Nic" pic a nigga

2021 we still say pic nic? Hmmmmm

Well X you still say da N word

WTF I'm from west oakland

nigga wasn't no bad word

but if you called a nigga black

you might have a fight

and don't call his mama black

might git ass whuppin'

At Lowell Park Cat Brooks was speaking

Told how artists as activists can change world

with stories tales of truth paintings murals mind changing

Cat spoke of Carole Fife, new councilwoman of west oakland

we got ya in gul

don't forget how ya got in 'an where ya came from

Cat said we go be on yo ass gul

like roy rogers on trigger

better stand 'n deliver

don't get sucked into Mayor Libby Schaaf's Jerry Brown in drag dreams

police dreams of nothingness and dread

wanna stop da killin'?

give nigga jobs

secure da hood if nothin else

won't let a nigga hold a stop sign on construction sites

an' ya wonder why we kill late into night

don't give a fk 'bout Juneteenth 4th a Jew lie

New Year's auction block day

Easter wit rabbit's laying chicken eggs

Xmas bout a homeless nigga 

who came to save world

 

Crusin' Oakland

Stop by Arab liquor store

Get henny to relax

Did video editing early in da morn

Editor in shock at black studies community style

Raw uncut Marvin X style

Ayodele Nzinga called it education by fire! She ate fire grew strong

Stand on her own limbs

Ife gave her eternal mysteries rituals

 

Black arts movement understood myth/ritual

Sun Ra Myth Science ARKESTRA

EGYPTIAN KEMET SPACE IS THE Place

Haven’t you heard it’s after the end of the worl

Arab liquor store nigga beggin fa dolla

make me wanna holla

i'm blessed

come out ta give nigga dolla'

I used to hustle too

crack days of yore'

dolla nigga busy talkin ta nigga on bike

I drive on ta  da lake

See black watermelon man

stop at watermelon man

Want ta spend money wit a nigga 

 

It’s hard ta spend money wit a niggah

Check yo daily round

How much money ya spend wit a nigga

multi-culticultral fine

But can I spend money wit my people Black African people

Can I spend a dolla? Fifty cents?

See black by lake selling watermelons

 

black man guarantee his melons 

they ain't from Mexico?

I bought melons from Mexico

Threw in garbage

Black man guarantee his melons

No Mexico

Bakersfield

Didn’t tell him I pitched watermelons in Bakersfield

Bakersfield so hot no work after noon

100 degrees plus in Bakersfield

Sunburned bakersfield

I am son of central valley

Raisin cotton watermelons fruit every kind

 

Told black watermelon man

 

 I'm from Fresno gimme two

Pretty chocolate wife helped put them in my car

Cruise on

check  vendors at lake

police got niggas roped off with cones

control niggas with cones these days

better'n police dogs I must say

 

horses pepper spray

cones contain unofficial vendors

liquor weed vendors

Hey hey hey

got good weed

all a nigga want all a nigga need

good weed

 

official vendors wanna be wit unofficial

Unofficials make more money

They vice vendors

Fk da OPD Franchise Tax Board County City tax permits

Nigga need moritoritum on taxation without reparations, equity. Gov. Jerry Brown said, “Give moritorium on taxation of certified cultural groups.” As per Oakland and equity, i.e., reparations, the Black Street Vendors Association demand a moratorium on all taxation and permit fees for the next ten years as we assume equity in Oakland’s Downtown Plan for the next 25 to 50 years.

square  niggas git nowhere

 

Square nigga vendors want to make money with

Criminal niggas

Fk square nigga square shit

Cruisin’ Oakland

cruise on to gas station

Park Ave 580

go deep east

 

Ground zero

Deep east my peoples too

Uhuru House 73rd MacArther

98th and A Black Men’s Conference House

My deep east gul friends loved me

Treated me like a king

One said, “Daddy, can I be wit you by maself?”

 

I said, “Yes Baby, but now let’s get down with me, you and baby two. What’s wrong wit threesome, you ain’t down wit dat?”

“Yes, Daddy, I down wit three but sometimes I just wanna be wit me and you.”

My deep east guls loved me true. Our threesome love was somethin’ you need to do. No argument no fuss, my guls loved me and you know enough.

Deep east guls

They from west oakland too

East oakland niggas west oakland true

 

Where day mama daddy from

Uncles aunts

7th Street Campbell Peralta Adeline Magnolia

Cruisin’ 580 to keller

Bancroft to 90th

pass liquor store Olive ground zero

If you know

Liquor store closed down now

used to be waterhole

gamblin' killin' 

popo know

store public nuisance

Arab sellin’ guns dope too

won't buy nothin' from a nigga

they sand niggas too

 

Ain't Hajar they moma

Abraham screwed Hajar when Sarah old

she had Isaac

Hajar Egyptian maid 

had Ishmael

Hajar fled from Abraham

well of Zem Zem

 

For thirst

Mecca in the night of her flight

You are El Muhajir the migrant

You flee city to city

No matter

“Flee in the name of Allah and you shall find in the earth many places of escape and abundant resources.”--Al Qur’an

 

 

Cruise down 90th to friend house

raising three boys ain't his

he don't have no kids

boys no daddy

he daddy love 'em true

they stuck on computer games earphones

can't hear me say hello

I say hey stupid 

they look up

Don’t wanna be stupid but  stupid still

hear me call 'em stupid

Take off earphones

baby boy #3 come in room

I say how ya doin'?

I'm good he say

 

Oh, you don't do nothin bad

Yeah, I'm bad I beat my big brother

I say kick 'm in da head

he tried 

brother blocked his move

Thank God for the fathers

raise children not their own

ungrateful bastards

we call them

how you hate man yo daddy

woman yo mama

never seen real mama daddy

you say man woman  raised yo funky ass ain't shit

Fk you ungrateful bastard

 

 

I depart deep east

hit 98th Bancroft

'nother nigga beggin' when I turn at light

blow my horn

give nigga the dolla nigga a liquor store didn't want

after he git ma dolla 'nother car call him over

he come past me with pep in step

I see five dolla' bill in his hand

He gone ta see crack man

Didn't know crack was still 'round

but I heard it was

 

98th to 580 freeway

but goin back #13

I love #13 cause it so green

trees n' things

some niggas never been on #13

sometimes I turn down my cruising music

Jimmy Smith Hammond B-3

wanna hear silence of trees

talk to me trees green leaves

remind me of dirty south roads

glad #13 freeway

get off on Park to my apartment up from Lakeshore

Yeah, I heard the gunshots on Juneteenth from my apartment

Thought the copter was gonna land on my roof

God/Allah told me don't go out yo house on Juneteenth

God/Allah said I'm don't care if a million niggas at lake

peace be still my servant

I listened to My Lord

Sami allahu liman hamida/Allah hears those who praise Him

Rabbana laka al hamd/Our Lord to Thee is due all praise

Al hamdu lilah.

Next day I got email say: "You have been awarded a grant of $100,000."

Peace be still.

As I entered my apartment from crusin' Oakland 

young girls were screaming

were they running from the boys?

Let the baby girls scream

They shall run from boys soon enough

Seeking their minds bodies

Be strong young girls

Follow your dreams passions

Beyond wife motherhood dreams

What is your mission passion

Let husband know you dream too

Don’t deny dreams of wives

What shall daughters dream

If mothers don’t dream. 

And you may be utterly shocked at dreams of mothers

Their dreams may save you from that terrible night soon come

 

You call it hospice

The clown shall be funny with jokes

Nurse shall come canning jars morphine

Kill pain no drug can kill except death itself

Death arrives soon enough

It wasn’t cancer covid19

Wasn’t death dreams of unresolved grief trauma of long ago

But surely death came from DNA 

Ancestor DNA

Tired in our genes Eldridge Cleaver said in his days of wisdom sanity

Amiri  Baraka said don’t let them take your um boom ba boom]

If you let them take your um boom ba boom

Take centuries to get back

Maybe two three hundred years

(let me shut up before I mess up the Master Poet’s poem and he promised to rise from the grave to ask, “Marvin, why you fk up my motherfuckin’ poem? And don’t act like you originated the idea of my poem. Tell ‘em the idea came from me!”

I cruise I cruise

Did you git da news

Don’t be confused

Police march for police things

Mayors politicians same

Anti police march

Social justice thangs

 

Ain’t same same

Crusin’ oakland. 

Got a call from my friend

 

In wheelchair walked me to end of block

Then returned to his house. Neighbors on porch. 

They party hardy. Mother of boys call my friend

Daddy of boys. Then gunshots at neighbors house.

Women shot on the porch. High class woman

Shot on the porch. They followed her. Game follows game.

So happy to be home. I listen to the young girls scream. I pray they don’t scream so loudly when men and boys come to destroy their dreams!

--Marvin X

7/10/21