Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow

There are more African Americans under correctional control today--in prison or jail, on probation or parole--than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for life. These men are part of a growing undercaste, not class, caste--a group of people who are permanently relegated, by law, to an inferior second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits--much as their grandparents and great-grandparents once were during the Jim Crow era.--Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow

Congress to Palestinians: Drop dead - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Congress to Palestinians: Drop dead - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Harlem Discussion on Manning's Malcolm X Book

Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Black Revolutionary
A Critical Discussion of the New Biography-Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE /

MALCOLM X BLVD + 135TH STREET

Video link:*http://politube.org/show/3222**

This is a video of a panel organized by the Malcolm X Museum Chair: Sam Anderson*

PANELISTS INCLUDE...

Abdullah Abdur Razzaq Personal Secretary to Malcolm X.

Rosemari Mealy- Author-Activist, /Memories of a Meeting: Fidel and Malcolm X..

Bill Sales- Author-Activist, /From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the //Organization of Afro American Unity.

Kevin Powell- Public Speaker, and author or editor of 10 books, including /Open Letters to//America and /The Black Male Handbook.

William Strickland- Educator-Activist-Author, /Malcolm X: Make It Plain

Amina Baraka- Poet, Songstress and Activist

Amiri Baraka- Revolutionary Poet, Author and Jazz Composer

Zionism and National Insanity

Zionism And National Insanity

"Marvin X at his best, clarity of perception!" --Gerald Ali, UK

Recent events in Israel such as the planned building of 1,600 housing units in Arab East Jerusalem, lead us to the conclusion the Zionists are headed down a national suicide path that will surely take America, if not the world, with them. What makes their suicide a foregone conclusion is the fact they are surrounded by nations with populations more suicidal than they.

The Saudi Arabian brand of Islam promoted by Al Quida is a return to Ya'um Jahiliyah or the days of ignorance before the advent of Islam in 632 AD. The Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah are just as determined as the Jewish Zionists to execute their fanatical, dogmatic vision in the world, or in particular, the Middle East.

It is a dance of death for all peoples, with no hope in sight. The more the Muslims seem ready to conclude a deal with for some semblance of a Palestinian state, the more the Zionists expand their colonial occupation of Arab land.

Despite the winds of revolution and cries for social-political and economic justice throughout the region, the Zionists in Israel are tone deaf and determined to continue down the road to hell, for where else can they go as the Arab masses move toward a unity never before seen.

The recent visit of Israeli leader Netanyahu was a supreme example of hubris or simple minded White supremacy arrogance. He openly and unashamedly defied President Obama's call for a return to the pre-1967 borders in a final peace deal with the Palestinians. Despite having the greatest army in the world and nuclear weapons, Netanyahu claimed the 1967 borders are indefensible. How is this possible with an annual three billion dollar defense welfare check from America? And the Israeli sycophants in the US Congress treated the Zionist leader as a rock star, yet he is a star sure to fall from the sky. It is only a matter of time before the Zionist date with destiny.

Not long ago the son of a Hamas leader who confessed being a snitch for the Zionists, said he agreed to snitch after he saw nothing shall happen regarding Palestine as long as the two sides maintain their dogmatic religiosity or archaic mythology.

There can be no forward movement with such backward notions of history, of aboriginal claims of ownership based on mythology and religiosity, e.g., the Chosen people of God poppycock. At least the Arabs come from the reality that they were brazenly removed from their homeland.

How does one make peace with someone who has seized your homeland and relegated you to refugee camps within and outside your original space, especially when the occupation is based on injuries inflicted by someone else (Hitler)? Why should Arabs suffer for what Nazis did to the Jews?

The Arabs say they shall fight to the death to reclaim their land, with Hamas fighting for every inch of land taken, no matter how long it takes. It took 200 years before Saladin removed the last Crusaders! The Zionists claim Hamas will not recognize them, but what is the idea of a "Jewish" state but the non-recognition of the Palestinian people? Where is democracy in such a state, where is humanity. It is buried in mythology, a mythology that shall not survive the new era. I don't care what any holy books say, there shall be no peace without justice. This is the magic word missing in the vocabulary of both Netanyahu and President Obama. Nobody wants more than justice and nobody wants less.

What is amazing is that the Zionists have a nuclear arsenal and the greatest army in the Middle East, if not the world--at least until Hezbollah fought them to a standstill in Lebanon (a feat greater than the combined Arab armies in several wars against the Zionists)--yet all we hear is the need for security. What more security do you need? You have bombs, planes, tanks, soldiers, bio-chemical weapons of mass destruction and nukes, what more security do you need? Would tightening the grip on the Arab concentration camps suffice, i.e., will the Wall you are building satisfy your security needs, a checkpoint on every block, every mile? A snitch in every Arab home?

No matter the intractable positions on both sides, we are nearing a conclusion on this matter, yes, in spite of the duplicity of all concerned, the Zionists, their American sycophants, and the quisling Muslim governments in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf States. Also, we cannot ignore the critical role of Iran in this drama, with their support of Hamas and Hezbollah for matters of their mythological dreams.

All these myths must be cast into the dustbin of history and a new vision must be adopted by all sides, no matter how painful. But again, the vision must be based on justice, not peace. Peace with boots on the neck is not a real and lasting peace. It is a sham peace and it will only hasten the day of judgment.

What we have is a prescription for full blown Armageddon. Let the fundamental Christians rejoice along with the 12vers in Iran who anxiously await the return of the 12th Imam or Mahdi, while the Christians savor the return of their Messiah with the destruction of Jerusalem, or an even more dramatic total destruction of the Middle East.

Either the Palestinians shall obtain their state or we shall simply await the final Holocaust that will supposedly usher in the new era of peace in the world. If the 1967 borders are indefensible, equally indefensible is the idea of a "Jewish" state. This idea doesn't border on insanity, it is the essence of insanity, a total break with reality.
--Marvin X
3/15/10

Revised 5/25/11

Although Marvin X is considered the father of Muslim American literature (Dr. Mohja Kahf), his thinking is Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, the title of his 2007 book on consciousness that Mumia Abu Jamal called "an encyclopedia of knowledge."

The World We Want is the World We Need

The World We Want Is the World We Need

This is the text of a talk presented by Vijay Prashad at The Riverside Church in New York on May 20, 2011 at an event entitled The World We Want Is the World We Need, sponsored by the Brecht Forum and Critical Resistance, and co-sponsored by the Mission and Social Justice Ministry of Riverside Church, Bluestockings Books, the Counterpublic Collective, the Indypendent, and the National Lawyers Guild, NYC Chapter. Also speaking at this event was Angela Davis, Ruthie Gilmore and Laura Flanders, and Mahina Movement performed two sets of music. 2400 people attended.

--Sam Anderson

by Vijay Prashad

We must love one another or die. --W. H. Auden

Capitalism is like a roller coaster. The dynamism of ruthless profit pushes against the constraints of humanity and technology to produce the boom years. But the very pressures of cutting wages and substituting machines for people creates unruly competition – the vast mass of humanity has not enough money in hand to buy goods, and the piles of wastedgoods tempers the enthusiasm of capital to make more. We enter the bust years.

Pressures from workers and the discovery of the dangers of the bust years lead to the idea that the State must spend taxed money or borrowed money to stimulate the economy. Where social democracy is stronger, the money was spent on the social side of things: on health care, on education, on public transportation, on public parks, on the social wages that both revved up the stalled economy and provided the basis of social solidarity. Such a social democratic path provided the objective basis for socialism: people might take pleasure in social interchange, in mutual care and solicitude. This was not capital's preferred path. It has a harsher tendency.

In the United States, from the late 19th century to the present, spending on the social side of the ledger has not gone above 15% of the Gross Domestic Product. Here, the government has conducted its countercyclical spending not on the social side but on the side of repression: on the international armed forces and the domestic armed forces; on the military and on the police. You get the stimulus you need but what you don't get is the objective basis for social solidarity. Military and police hierarchies are strengthened, and horizontal social life is eroded.

**

If this was not bad enough, over the past thirty years another social process has added to the grief of normal militarism: what we call globalization. The debt crisis in the Global South sent billions of dollars into the banks of the North. These banks and their industrial counterparts decided to finance their factories outside the high wage zones of the North. Wages are high in the United States because all our basic needs have been privatized: as individuals and families we are responsible for health care, education, transportation, insurance. If we don't earn enough, we will not survive. That is what makes our labor so expensive. If the rich were taxed and if services came to us through the State, we could receive lower wages and produce goods at a much more competitive rate. But that is not so. Instead, the State encouraged firms to take their industrial capital to zones of cheaper labor – making more and more people in the United States utterly disposable, redundant to the changed economy. It is to control them, to corral them that the prison-industrial complex grew, and that the police forces expanded. The State has no future for its people; it can only offer incarceration of one kind or another. Everybody dies, but not everybody lives.

Banks also turned their accumulated capital into financial wizardry. Mathematics is the lead science, not chemistry, physics or biology. Things are no longer to be made for profits to be harnessed; it is enough to manipulate numbers. Finance makes its own maps; it has its own atlas. Money makes wide detours around the human imagination. Disposable people are needed to sign the forms for no-money-down-payments; and then they are needed to take the blame for the system's torments. Their hopes and dreams, their visions and needs are not at the center of things.

Some believe that the world will end on Saturday. Our framework is not so random, so catastrophic. I too believe in the End Times. In the End Time for Capitalism, a system rooted in the destruction of the human spirit. Democracy is our prejudice, but it does not fully exist yet. It is an idea, it provides space for action, but it has not yet been incarnated fully: the secular Rapture will be the day when Democracy will come into its own.

**

Democracy makes its appearance in the streets of Egypt, and elsewhere in the Arab Revolt. They follow events in Latin America, from the Venezuelan Caracazo of 1989 to the Bolivian Gas Wars in 2003-2005. They follow as well the events in the rest of Africa, from the unrest over the Kenyan elections of 2007-08 to the Enough is Enough protests in Nigeria of the past years. The people know or feel this idea of democracy, and they have decided to enact it on their streets. For them, the idea is no longer simply a slogan; the script is being read out in public.

And furthermore, this is a socialist idea, for at its depth is a scream for popular control over institutions, not simply for a transference of power from one section of the elite to another.

Egypt's Pharonic State had a sophisticated security apparatus, with a necklace of prisons around Cairo itself. The upsurge has taken aim at these prisons. But it is not enough for them to target the prisons. These are an emblem of a system that relied upon incarceration for its stability and its treasury (The U. S. bursary of $3billion per year was designed to contain dissent among the Egyptian people and to keep in place the peace deal with Israel). To truly end the security state, the people had to recapture their politics and their economy and wash the toxicity out of their society. An early indication of this total view was the strikes by the Suez workers, and the threat to close down the Suez Canal: that would be an internationalist gesture, with their hands on the lever of a tenth of the world's trade.

Every country gets the fascism it deserves. And so too its revolutionary task. The Arab Revolt is taking care of its various confounding structures. It is their job. The help we can give them is to begin the long process of dismantling the imperial tentacles, including ending the subsidy given to the Egyptian army as a bribe on behalf of Israel. Our job is not to run their revolution; our job is to lift the
U.S. boot from the necks of the Arab people.

That boot goes down in the name of Justice and Peace, in the name of humanitarian intervention. By temperament, George W. Bush destroyedt his permission to bomb – he was too brash, too unable to mask raw force behind sweet words. Barack Obama is more sophisticated. He has rehabilitated humanitarian intervention, which is the window dressing that imperialism needs to counter our wider ideas and aspirations for democracy. When the empire acts, it is never on the side of the good. Historians go back and find that it is hard to rehabilitate the war aims of imperialism: negotiations are on to bring the Taliban back to authority, so where is the concern for Afghan women now? So too with Libya, where the neo-liberals like Mahmud Jibril and Shokri Ghanem will be handed the keys to the country – absent erratic and ruthless Gaddafi. Much the same in Haiti: the boot does not bring justice, which is the collateral damage of imperialism.

The neo-liberal project of the United States has come undone in the economic sphere. That project was never about economics alone. It had its limits, such as the reliance by the United States on others to buy its substantial debt. The way to ensure that this debt is covered is by political pressure, by military force: the Chinese, Saudis and Europeans continue to cover the US bills because they recognize the Dollar as the planet's main currency, and they allow the US to protect their interests with its substantial military force.

If domestic prisons and prison-like conditions maintain an immoral peace inside the country, the planetary reach of the US war machine maintains power for the global elite against humanity. Maps point to places where life is evil now: Afghanistan, Libya, Bahrain, Gaza, and Detroit. The military aspect of neo-liberalism is alive and well. We might not have responsibility for the way things turn out in Egypt, but we are certainly responsible for the militarism that keeps us afloat.

Our job is to build our movements, to incarnate democracy in our spaces. Critical Resistance and the Brecht Forum are anchors. They deserve our support. So do all the other small platforms that will help us build across our society, to end prisons and prison-like conditions, to make our politics more humane, our society less toxic. So do new formations like the United National Anti-War Committee, and others who want to unfurl the banner of Peace over our cities.

We live in freedom by necessity. We must reshape our world. We must love one another, or die.

[Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His most recent book, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009. The Swedish and French editions are just out. He can be reached at vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu.]
























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New York Vision Festival, June 5-11

Louis Reyes Rivera




Woody King









Ed Bullins




Amiri Baraka















Marvin X















16 YEARS OF VISION FESTIVAL

take a stand
• Take A Stand – Arts and Community
Arts For Art maintains a commitment to understand what is at play in the world around us and theeffect on our creative community. We are leading the way in building opportunities for uniting the spectrum of the innovative creative jazz music and related arts. The Vision Festival draws people from around the world who are interested in the great, the creative and the innovative with a shared sense of social responsibility. AFA has been working to strengthen the artistic communities by holding town meetings, panel discussions and creating opportunities for artists to perform and come together – to build a power through unity.

This year’s festival features 3 Public Discussions:

June 5 – 4pm

Opening the Festival - Obama, Class Struggle, The Media & The Arts
Panelists:
Amiri Baraka - The last Poet Laureate of New Jersey
Ed Bullins – Playwright; former Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party
Woodie King - director and producer; founder and president of New Federal Theatre
Marvin X - Prime Minister of Poetry, First Poet's Church of the Latter Day Egyptian Revisionists
William Parker – bassist, composer
Louis Reyes Rivera, moderator – Poet; Former host of Perspective on WBAI

June 6 – 5pm

Imagining a Culture of Resistance & Radical Vision: Artists & Social Action
A panel of artists and activists from different perspectives explore the role of art and culture in
changing the world today, challenging people to think critically and envisioning another way the
world could be.

Panelists: Marc Ribot, David Henderson, Patricia Parker, Annie Day, Brandon Ross,
Michael Heller moderator.

June 9 – 5pm

Innovative Music in Education –

Musicians take on the struggle to include innovative music as part of arts curriculum,
and discuss the why and how to accomplish this critical task.

Panelists: Gerald Cleaver, Daniel Levin, Tom Zlabinger, Nicole Federici, Juan Pablo Carletti
Michael Heller moderator

Abrons Art Center is at 466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street) New York, NY 10002.
For more information visit www.artsforart.org, or contact us at 212-254-5420.

Muhammad Ahmed on the Present Situation

Dr. Muhammad Ahmed, aka Max Stanford, has answered my call that a Black Revolutionary Nationalist stand up and represent the voice of radical intellectualism, largely unrepresented since Malcolm X. Yes, we must think globally yet act locally, i.e., nationally. We may live in the global village but we have national interests that must be addressed.

We have more brothers and sisters under the criminal justice system's virtual slavery than when were in chattel property slavery. This should be of great and immediate concern since we have a history of leaders coming from this class of individuals locked down. Mumia Abu Jamal is the most prominent example. Imagine how many other minds are behind bars with solutions that surpass the thinking of our socalled brightest academic minds that are in mental and material prisons far worse than the cell Mumia occupies on death row.

We appreciate Dr. Ahmed's attempt to clarify what's really going on. We need more radical voices to spread their points of view, if only to expand the dialogue. We do not and never shall control the Monkey Mind Media, so we must as Amiri Baraka says, "Stop thinking like Americans," and use the technology at our disposal. We must send and resend vital information such as Ahmed's statement below. Let us link up with each other to do as Baraka says, immediately shoot down any madness they put out. We most certainly have the brains to do it!

Let us move expeditiously to extricate ourselves from a situation that is way past due resolving.
The level of ignorance is abysmal. Information must be repeated over and over to get past the wretched central nervous systems blocked by the rap beats and addiction to cell phone mania.
--Marvin X
5/23/11

What is the Meaning of the Present Situation?

By Dr. Muhammad Ahmed
(aka Max Stanford)
Temple University, Philadelphia

There are several developments that represent a breakthrough in the
global finance monopoly capitalist system presently dominated by the
United States of America (USA). This is the result of the structural
systemic crises which is produced by the increasing use of automation
and robtics in the international production process:

The financial crisis brought on by the expanding use of electronics in
production is continuing to tighten its grip both internationally and
nationally. The cyclical crisis of under consumption is developing.
Automated production drives labor – produced commodities off the
market. In this process, wages are dragged down to the cost of
automated production.

What we have witnessed in the middle east with national democratic
uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen against neocolonial
dictatorships are due to the neo liberal austerity policies of those
regimes on their populations.

The rich got richer and more Westernized and the poor who constituted
90% of the population got poorer and more desperate.

While the figure heads have been removed, the neocolonial system
remains. But the uprisings represent a break in the consciousness of
masses of people and as Samir Amin has said, these movements may
eventually develop into socialist revolutions.

Libya on the other hand is a different situation in which the
imperialist north (U.S. Britain, Europe (NATO) led by the U.S. have
used an “opportune moment to subvert the Libian socialist revolution.
This is due to the world-wide peak in oil and rising competition for
oil, natural gas, water and other mineral resources. China and India
are viewed favorably by those countries who have these resources due
to their non-colonial and non- imperialist past (more on Libya later)

The US and its other capitalist allies, France, Britain, Western
Europe and Japan, have not fully recovered from the Great Recession of
2008. The US government is in great debt and has had to slash it
expenses. The Republican Party has forced Obama and the Democratic
Party to compromise on the budget.

This comes at a time when the Republican Party is on the attack to
attempt to destroy Obama‘s base i.e., Public Sector Workers, unions
and collective bargaining. Public Sector Workers, workers in
Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan New
Mexico and other states are all under attack by the Republican Party.
Barry Finger in, Public Sector Workers and the Crisis in the winter
2011 issue of New Politics says,

Behind the assault is the very real recognition that Public Sector now
has the highest concentration of unionized workers in the American
economy.

The Republican Party representing the reactionary racist fascistic
right wing sector of U.S finance monopoly capital has played the “race
card” with white workers using Sara Palin and the Tea party movement
to whip up a racist false class consciousness among white workers who
are becoming more dispossed due to industrial jobs going overseas and
the bursting of the financial bubble of 2008 which led to mass
mortgage foreclosures. It is these white workers who voted in the
Republicans.

Fascism is not a choice or program. It is arising objectively as the
only possible political superstructure for the economic takeover by
corporate power. It arises within the struggle of the capitalist class
– a class which is itself being transformed - to align the political
superstructure with the changing productive relations.

Dr. Grace Lee Boggs said that “Wisconsin represents the end of the
Welfare State.” Enter the permanent U.S warfare states.

The struggle in Wisconsin and other states can become a
transformational movement if those involved in the struggle recognize
that our current crises are rooted in the decline of the empire which
made possible the welfare state with its thousands of public employees
to take care of tasks for which we the people must become increasingly
responsible.

With the Democratic regime of the Obama administration attacking
Muammar Qaddafi and Libya, Africa it seems like it does not matter
whether the President is white or black, Republican or Democratic, his
or her job is to protect the interests of the American Empire.

Because oil is a global product, the USA’s higher consumption and
dependency means it must act globally to secure supplies. Its interest
in guaranteeing plentiful supplies of oil translates into the need to
secure access to virtually every region in the world, and this
explains why oil has such a widespread effect on America’s global
political strategy

It would not be farfetched to believe that the C.I.A, deprogrammed and
reprogrammed captured Al Qaida militants who were held in the U.S.
army base at Guantanamo in Cuba, released them and sent them into
Libya to fulfill the United States, AFRICOM (African Command)
controlled by the USA to destabilize Libya. Why?

Because Qaddafi has aligned Libya with Cuba and Venezuela and is the
force behind a call for a “United States of Africa” in the African
Union continuing the work of Kwame Nkrumah, past president of Ghana.
Qaddafi has also come to the aid of North African immigrants who have
migrated to Europe and who are being harassed, beaten and are racially
oppressed while living in Europe.

Before the “so-called uprising” and foreign bombing of Libya; Libya
had the highest standard of living in all of Africa.

Libya’s Revolution brought free health care and education to the
people and subsidized housing. In fact students in Libya can study
there or abroad and the government gives them a monthly stipend while
they are in school and they pay no tuition. If a Libyan needs a
surgery that must be done overseas, then the government will pay for
that surgery.

The U.S strategy is one to build Israel which constantly bombs and
subjugates the people of Palestine and to acquire by force Libya’s
oil.

The United States has sought to base its AFRICOM military operation
on African soil for years now. However the African Union has taken a
position, given its member states colonial past, to oppose foreign
troops on African soil. The Libyan situation has created a cover for
the United States for the first time to launch military operations
against Africa under AFRICOM’s new commander, General Carter Ham, who
took over command of AFRICOM just days before military operations were
launched against Libya

With raging battles in Iraq, Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan and now
Libya, the United States has become a global warfare state. As more
breaks in the global system occurs, the increasing momentum for the
protracted world-wide permanent revolution for the overthrow of
capitalism develops. Not reported widely in the establishment media,
is that auto parts assembly workers at Honda plants in China recently
won higher wages and the right to elect their own union officers after
organizing a wave of successful strikes.

Since China now leads the world in manufacturing for export, the
struggles of Chinese workers to organize are crucial both for the
well-being of huge members of human beings in China, and for the
ability of workers in the rest of the world to end the race to the
bottom

With the recent tsunami in Japan and its nuclear meltdown, global
warming is becoming a concern for all of humanity. We must move to a
green economy and way of life or the end of the world as we know it is
near.

The USA produces 35 percent of the world’s transport emissions of
carbon-dioxide. Americans use five times the global average of energy
consumption. The USA is the largest contributor to global warming.…a
major problem is that the entire modern economy’s energy,
transportation, industrial, and residential infrastructure is built on
fossil fuels. It takes many decades to replace a society’s economic
infrastructure. Without fundamental transformation of the
infrastructure, short-term conservation measures and minor technical
changes are unlikely to achieve substantial sustained reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions.

In order to respond positively to the present situation we should
“think globally and organize (act) locally.” On the local level
spread the revolution by creating a local green economy; politically
“uprooting” racist reactionaries and neo-colonial comprador (sell
outs) by running grassroots candidates and “building a resistance
movement against racist- anti worker tactics by capitalists. As we
said in 1963, “Arise! Awake! Your Future is at Stake!”

(Max Stanford)
Assistant Professor
Department of African American Studies, Temple University
4/17/11 Dr. Muhammad Ahmad
-----------------------------------------------------------
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http://www.africa-union.org
http://english.aljazeera.net
http://www.freemumia.org
http://www.herald.co.zw/
http://www.anc.org.za
http://www.caribbeannewspapers.com
http://www.kpfa.org
http://www.wbai.org

Mythology of Love, A Womanhood and Manhood Poetic Rites of Passage by Marvin X

Tentative Order of Ritual

1. Welcome, Hunia Bradley
2. Libation, Rev. Mutima Imani
3. Pearls/For the Women, Mechele LaChaux, Marvin X
4. Phavia Kujichagulia, YoYoYo
5. Woman in the Box, Alona Clifton, dannce, Raynetta Rayzetta
6. Beautiful Flower, Destiny Muhammad, Tarika, Tacuma
7. Aries Jordan, Vagina Monologue
8. Ayodele Nzinga, Bathroom Graffitti Queen by Opal Palmer Adisa
9. Mechele LaChaux, Woman on the Cell Phone

15 Minute Intermission

10. Augusta Collins, song, M.A.N., Miles from Nowhere
11. Derrick Hughes, A Man's World
12. Marvin X, For the Men
13. Ptah Allah El, Aries Jordan, Confession of a Wife Beater, Testimony
14. O'Town Passions, Ten Commandments of Love


15. Parable of a Real Woman, Rev. Brandon Reems and Bishop Ernestine Reems
16. Mechelle LaChaux, Destiny Muhammad, Tacuma, Tarika, Nature Boy
17. Marvin X, In the Name of Love
18. Geoffrey Grier, Q and A

For the Women
For the women
Who bear children and nurture them with truth
Who cook and clean behind thankless men
For the women
Who love so hard so true so pure
For the women
With faith in God and men
For the women
Alone with beer and rum
Searching for a man
At the club college church party
For the women
Independent of men
Searching their souls
Who smoke crack and freak
Who love only women
Who play and run and never show
Who rise in revolt in hand with men
Who say never never, never again
For the women who suffer abuse and cry for justice
For the women happy and free of maternal madness
For the women who study and write
For the women who sell their love to starving men
For the women who love to make love and be loved by men
For the women of Afrika who work so hard
For the women of American who suffer the master
For the women who turn to God in prayer and patience
For the women who are mothers of children and mothers of men
For the women who suffer inflation recession abortion recession
For the women who understand the rituals of men and women
For the women who share
For the women who are greedy
For the women with power
For the women with nothing
For the women locked down
For the women down town
For the women who break horses
For the women in the fields
For the women who rob banks
For the women who kill
For the women of history
For the women of now
I salute you. A MAN.
--Marvin X
Circa 1981

Marvin X reads with Phavia Kujichagulia and Rashidah Sabreen
Videographer and editor, Mr. Ken Johnson

Parable of A Real Woman

There was a man who had many women in his life. They had come and gone, with himself at fault most of the time. But he wouldn't give up, he continued his self improvement and search for that special woman.

He talked with elder women about what he should do. One told him he'd never had a real woman! If so, she would still be with him, no matter what, through thick and thin, up times and down times. Well, he asked, how would he know when such a woman was in his presence. First, clean up your own act, she said. Scoop your own poop.


Rid yourself of defects of character. Make amendments to all those you have harmed in life. It takes humility to do this. Still, how will I know the real woman? The older woman answered, you will know because when she comes over your house and sees something amiss, she will take authority to correct the situation. If your house is dirty, she will immediately ask if she can clean it as a favor to you, as an act of love.

She will not want any money for her services. And she will clean your house as it has never been cleaned before because she knows what she is doing. Yes, she is a pro, not only with house cleaning but with everything she does, including her love making. She will make sure you are satisfied and herself as well. She will demand respect and will respect you.

She will demand freedom and give you freedom. She will speak in the language of love so smoothly that it will be like a razor cutting to the heart. You will be bleeding to death but not know you are cut. You will do what she suggests and do it willingly because it will not be a demand but a request said so subtly you won't recognize it for what it actually is: a demand.

And you will love doing what she requests. When you need space and time to yourself you won't need to explain, she will pick up the vibe. And you will do the same for her. She will not be jealous and envious of your talent and skills or how handsome you are to other women.

She knows she has you in her pocket because she is confident of herself, and not worried about some other woman taking her man. If you are taken by another woman, it must be the will of God that you go. She knows God will replace her emptiness with someone even better than you. But she will give you time to get a grip on yourself and find your way back home.

Just don't take too long and when you come home don't be asking about what she was doing while you were gone. A real woman will put her resources at your disposal if you are worthy of them, as the prophet Muhammad was treated by the wealthy trade woman Khadijah. There is no selfishness in love. All is for the beloved, but a wise woman ain't no fool. As the song says, the greatest thing you will ever do is love and be loved in return. The man thanked the elder woman for her wisdom and departed on his search.
--11 March 2010



You Don't Know Me

You don't know me

you had a chance to know me

before we made love

you had a chance to know my mind

understand my fears

learn about issues

help me heal some things

but you wanted to make love

so you don't know me

we made love

but you don't know me

don't have a clue

think I'm a good d

or some good tight p

but you don't know me

and never will now

because you wanted to make love

you wanted to get a nut

we didn't even talk much

a little bit leading up to sex

I went along

I was horny too

but you don't know me

and I don't know you

now we never will

we blew it forever

because we made love

too fast too quick too soon

now you think you own me

I can't breathe

can't talk on the phone to friends

because we made love

because I gave you some d

you gave me some p

now I'm no longer human

I'm your love slave

you my slave

we're in love but you don't know me

we gonna get married

but you don't know me

we're gonna have children

but you don't know me

you're gonna beat my ass

but you don't know me

you're going to jail

but you don't know me

we're getting a divorce

but you don't know me

now we're friends "Just Friends" Charlie Parker tune

But you don't know me and never will.

--Marvin X

What is Love?

What is love only kisses hugs
what is love
only meetings of the minds
what about times when minds do not meet
is love not present in the air in the blood of loving souls
too ignorant to know the test of love
the many ways it strives to be and not be
yet is always
and forever
not always tender
sometimes rough and sharp
like a razor cutting to the heart
love is pain
we take to grow
be strong again
tears in the night
alone again
we find ourselves
wondering
if love was even real
yet it was
if we see
if we look
beyond romantic notions of everything is cool always with love
but we know the blues of love
when we miss the words from lips so tender in truth
but we miss them
in haste
to be the authority on love
yet love
has been around since eternity and will stay
when lovers have gone away
it will stay
in spite of all the tears
the fights
the verbal bouts
even the put outs
and come backs
and gimme my keys
and why don't you call
and don't you still care
and why did you go
and do you really lover her or really love him
after all the time we shared
how could you do this to me
after all I did for you in the night
what is love
sometimes we must enjoy the hurt the pain
to grow
be wise again
this time
with God
in the center of things
but try
for love is precious
time is short
life must be lived with joy
somehow
through it all
let joy arise
take control of love.
--Marvin X
from Land of My Daughters, poems, 2005,
Black Bird Press, Berkeley


A scene from Marvin X's 1981 classic play In the Name of Love,
starring Zahieb Mwongozi, Ayodele Nzinga and Doris Knight
video from the archives of Leon Teasley

Marvin X is the USA's Rumi!--Bob Holman

He's Plato teaching on the Streets of Oakland. His play One Day in the Life is the most powerful drama I've seen.--Ishmael Reed

A symphony conductor in the manner of Sun Ra. One of America's great story tellers. Maybe second to Mark Twain. Of course I'd place Marvin X ahead of him even.--Rudolph Lewis

One of the founders and innovators of the revolutionary school of African writing.--Amiri Baraka

His writing is orgasmic. He reaches in and pulls from a life lived hard, deep, wide, high and low, i.e., a sacrifice in blood. At the root of sacrifice is sacred, which is of God and for God. He has lived and examined the lives of the proverbial 10,000 black men and women...and gives us the truth of that experience, lived and examined.--Fahizah Alim, writer emeritus, Sacramento Bee

Marvelous Marvin X!--Dr. Cornel West

Still the undisputed King of Black Consciousness!--Dr. Nathan Hare

Marvin X is a human earthquake! He's known for putting together extravaganzas that border on creative chaos! But there's a method to his madness!

--Kalamu ya Salaam

"Marvin X at his best, clarity of perception!" --Gerald Ali

Mythology of Love is Phenomenal!
--Bruce George

It empowered me. I didn't know I had that much power.--A young sister

It helped me up my game!--A young brother

We should have had something like this when we were 16. It would have saved us a lot of trouble with women. It would have saved them a lot of pain dealing with us.
--Elder Brother

Blues man
Augusta Collins





There are more African Americans under correctional control today--in prison or jail, on probation or parole--than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for life. These men are part of a growing under caste, not class, caste--a group of people who are permanently relegated, by law, to an inferior second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits--much as their grandparents and great-grandparents once were during the Jim Crow era.--Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow


I must have Destiny in Mythology of Love. She understands where I'm coming from artistically and spiritually. We just need funding to keep our artists spreading joy.
If you would like to help make this production happen, let me know ASAP:jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Destiny Muhammad
Harpist of the Hood

Tentative Cast for Mythology of Love
by Marvin X

Dancers/choreographers Linda Johnson Raynetta Rayzetta, and drummer Val Serant are expected to participate in Mythology of Love




And it hurts like brand new shoes.
Parable of the Woman in the Box
There was a woman who lived inside a box. Her whole life had been spent inside the little box, squeezed in from all sides. She never went outside the box. People brought her food to eat but she ate it inside the four walls of the box. She was cramped to the point of being crippled because she could never stand up inside the box. Not only her body but her brain and spirit were crippled from living inside the box.

Her thinking was confined to what she could imagine inside the box, and that was very little, no big grand thoughts, only micro imaginings. Even her God was a little god, one that fit into the box. She could not envision her God outside and that her God ruled the whole world, not just her little world inside the box.

Now and then she would beat on the walls of her box in a vain attempt to break them down and escape. But whenever she did, someone would come by and whisper to her to be quiet, she was making noise and disturbing other people.

She would comply with their request, trying to be nice, since she really was a nice person, she just didn't know how to escape the box. And she had to be nice to the person who brought her food because they might not return if she got angry and loud, started screaming, hollering and foaming at the mouth. Inside the box, she lived the life of a stunted woman, her mental growth stunted as well.

She could not imagine the finer things of life, or how she might expand her spiritual development. She did not know how she might be able to fend for herself, make her own money for food and other things she needed, even if she stayed inside the box, but she really wanted to get out. Somehow she gathered the energy to have a thought that went beyond the box, energy that would stop her from being a stunted woman, unable to stand tall and rise from her condition inside the box.

She began to figure a way out, a way to free herself, mind, body and soul. She had to do some hard thinking but she was determined to liberate herself. She saw nails in the walls and began to tinker with them, push them a little with her fingernails, then wiggled around and backed into one wall, then the
other. After a time, she could see a little break between the walls. She came up with a name for the nails that kept her down. One nail she called ignorance. She knocked and knocked until it loosened. Then she beat and pressured another nail in the box she called passivity. When she put counter pressure on that nail the box started shaking.

She tinkered with another nail she called lack of desire and will. Then she started talking to the walls, telling them to open up she was coming out. She
even told her little God to give her a hand. Her little God gave her a hand. Some people came by and seeing the walls shaking, tried to pound on the nails, but the woman commanded the nails to stop in their tracks and they did as she commanded. She continued her resistance until the walls of the box gave in and was able to gradually stand and eventually began to do a little dance.
--3/10/10
From The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Marvin X, BBP, 2010.


i

He's lost in the wilderness, lost in bitterness.

For the Men

For the men
Who father children
With time and money
For the men
Who abandon children
In ignorance and addictions
For the men on the street
And the men in suites
For the men in villas
And the men in alleys
For the men with wives
And the men alone
For the men who honor wives
And the men who abuse them
For the men who rap
And the men who are silent
For the men who win
And the men who sin
For the men who love God
And the men who hate
For the men who are brothers
And the men who are beasts
For the men with holy ghost
And the men without hope
For the men of revolution
And the men of reaction
O, men, listen to the wise
Good comes to good
And the bad receive their due
There is no escape
Fro the men of this world
Or men of the next.

CALLING ALL BLACK MEN

COME OUT THE CLOSET!
Mr. Black Xerox
Clorox
Mason
Christian
Muslim
Democrat
Pan-African-
Wino
Dope smoker-
Coke sniffer
Down low brother

Calling all black men
Mr. Black wife beater-
rapist
robber
murderer
Worker
father
husband
lover
COME OUT THE CLOSET
Mr. Black back to Africa
Mr. Black I-love-America
Calling all black men, come in, come in, come in....



Memorial Day

I am a veteran
Not of foreign battlefields
Like my father in World War I
My uncles in WWII
And Korea
Or my friends from Vietnam
And even the Congo “police action”
But veteran none the less
Exiled and jailed because I refused
To visit Vietnam as a running dog for imperialism
So I visited Canada, Mexico and Belize then Federal prison for a minute
But veteran I am of the war in the hood
The war of domestic colonialism and neo-colonialism
White supremacy in black face war
Fighting for black power that turned white
Or was always white as in the other white people
So war it was and is
Every day without end no RR no respite just war
For colors like kindergarten children war
For turf warriors don’t own and run when popo comes
War for drugs and guns and women
War for hatred jealousy
Dante got a scholarship but couldn’t get on the plane
The boyz in the hood met him on the block and jacked him
Relieved him of his gear shot him in the head because he could read
Play basketball had all the pretty girls a square
The boyz wanted him dead like themselves
Wanted him to have a shrine with liquor bottles and teddy bears
And candles
Wanted his mama and daddy to weep and mourn at the funeral
Like all the other moms and dads and uncle aunts cousins
Why should he make it out the war zone
The blood and broken bones of war in the hood
No veterans day no benefits no mental health sessions
No conversation who cares who wants to know about the dead
In the hood the warriors gone down in the ghetto night
We heard the Uzi at 3am and saw the body on the steps until 3 pm
When the coroner finally arrived as children passed from school
I am the veteran of ghetto wars of liberation that were aborted
And morphed into wars of self destruction
With drugs supplied from police vans
Guns diverted from the army base and sold 24/7 behind the Arab store.
Junior is 14 but the main arms merchant in the hood
He sells guns from his backpack
His daddy wants to know how he get all them guns
But Junior don’t tell cause he warrior
He’s lost more friends than I the elder
What can I tell him about death and blood and bones
He says he will get rich or die trying
But life is not money
And if he lives he will learn.
If he makes it out the war zone to another world
Where they murder in suits and suites
And golf courses and yachts
if he makes it even beyond this world
He will learn that love is better than money
For he was once on the auction block and sold as a thing
For money, yes, for the love of money but not for love
And so his memory is short and absent of truth
The war in the hood has tricked him into the slave past
Like a programmed monkey he acts out the slave auction
The sale of himself on the corner with his homeys
Trying to pose cool in the war zone
I will tell him the truth and maybe one day it will hit him like a bullet
In the head
It will hit him multiple times in the brain until he awakens to the real battle
In the turf of his mind.
And he will stand tall and deliver himself to the altar of truth to be a witness
Along with his homeys
They will take charge of their posts
They will indeed claim their turf and it will be theirs forever
Not for a moment in the night
But in the day and in the tomorrows
And the war will be over
No more sorrow no more blood and bones
No more shrines on the corner with liquor bottles
teddy bears candles.
--May 25, 2007 Brooklyn NY


I Will Go into the CityI will go into the city
I will find work
I will find work
I will remember you, country woman
I will not forget you
Your laugh, your arguments
In order to learn
It is your way, let it be
How can I forget your lips
Your enchanting smile
I will not forget
The night we walked in the rain
Because it was free and we were free
For once we agree
The best of life is free
I will go into the city
I will find work
But you will be with me, country woman
When those city women come to devour me
With their sweet perfume
You will be there
Your spirit will protect me
I will never forget
How we sipped $1.00 margaritas
In the Mexican café in Chinatown
Our ride to the lake
Our picnic on the hill
The ranger spotted us with his binoculars
We did not care
We were filled
With the holy spirit of love
How can I forget
Hours in bed
We became children
Of the love spirit
Days, nights, mornings
Became one moment
Man and woman became one
Discovered their missing self
Eternal self
Self of love
Self of joy
Self of happiness realized

I will go into the city
I will find work
I will not forget you, country woman
I will return to claim you
In the name of love
I will claim you
Because you are woman
I will claim you
Because you are feeling and spirit
I will claim you
Because you are mind and beauty
I will claim you
Because you have given yourself to me so totally
I will claim you
In the name of Allah
I will claim you
For the glory of Allah
I will claim you.
--Marvin X From Selected Poems, 1979.

The Other Woman (from In the Name of Love)

Yes, I’m his other woman.
The invisible woman.
I love him
Just as much as she loves him
Maybe more
Cause I don’t know how much she loves him, anyway.
But I love him too!
She got papers on him
But papers don’t mean a damn thing to me
All I want is justice.
Nobody wants more than justice
And nobody wants less than justice
I want equality too.
I want equal time.
I told him to set up a schedule
And keep it.
I told him to be man enough
To tell his other woman
“Say, look, you are my woman
And she is my woman
I love both of you
It’s time we work together.”
He says he told her
He says he’s trying to break her in
Finessefully
I’m trying to be patient
Cause I ain’t going nowhere
Ain’t nowhere to go.
I’m sticking with my black man, my African man.
I been with this man off and on for 15 years
How long she been with him
What she know bout the man?
She damn sho don’t know much as I know
That’s the only reason I put up with him
Cause I know him so well.
But we should work together
Since we have the same interests and everything
Since we have so much in common
Don’t have me hating my sister
Don’t have my sister hating me
I’m bout progress
I’m willing to share him
Not because I just want to share somebody
But it just ain’t no men
You get with these men and they turn out to be punks.
Now what woman wants a punk?
Punk lookin for the same thing I’m looking for.
You know that’s a shame
So we lucky to have half a man these days
This must be the end of the world!
So like I say, I’m willing to share
We be sharing anyway
Tell the truth sisters
Your man is probably my man too!
Everything he do with you, to you and for you
He does with me, to me and for me
Let’s work together
Let’s help our men to be men
Especially those who want to be men.
That’s all I got to say.


Confession of a Polygamist

Yes, I have two wives
That’s right
Two mother-in-laws too!
Ain’t that a bitch!
And my wives love me
Even in my terribleness
They love me
Even though they hate each other
They love me
I just wish all that energy
They spend hating each other
I wish they would help me fight the devil
Help me make some money
I mean, I try to bring them in harmony
But what can you do with this
North American African woman?
All that ignorance, selfishness, possessiveness
They want you to lie and sneak around the alley
Well, I ain’t lying and I ain’t sneaking
You can call me nigguh, black, African, whatever
But I’m a man and I chart my course
I’m not following nobody’s agenda but mine
If these women want to get in harmony with me, fine
If they don’t, fine
But I’m not sneaking around like a dog
The Christian way is not my way.
To hell with monogamy!
One man one woman
That’s bullshit!
Now you tell me
What man only got one woman?
Does a man have one suit?
So many of our women don’t have no man
Now what if ten women were on an island
With one man
What would they do?
They would share him
Whether they liked it or not
And sister gonna have to do the same thing
Women don’t care if you married these days
They like it better if you are married
That’s what they’re lookin for
A married man!
But my hands are full
Two of these North American African women
Are enough for me
But women are so aggressive these days
They’ll rape you! That’s right
Sometimes I feel like the fireman
I go from house to house
Dashing flames, extinguishing passions and fears
There is no rest for me
Fire is everywhere.


Eternal Woman

I know the pain
Of love and hate
The happy hours
The long debates
Wanting to run
Wanting to stay
The lover’s kiss
And then to miss
The point of me
Rushing pass
To the point of you.

Eternal Man

What did you say?

Eternal Woman
You heard what I said.
Why didn’t you come home last night?

Eternal Man

Don’t be asking me why I didn’t come home. Matter of fact, don’t ask me shit. I’m a free man. I come and go as I please.

Eternal Woman

I’m tired of your shit.




Eternal Man
(slaps her to floor)

Shut up bitch!



Confession of a Wife BeaterI beat her because she loved me
I beat her
Gouged my fingers into her eyes
Stomped her on the floor
Because she loved my dirty drawers
I beat her
Put my hands on her throat and squeezed
Until her eyes looked like marbles
I beat her
Because she loved me
Because she gave me a child
That looked just like me
I beat her
Because I stood trembling
Watching the child ooze from her womb
I beat her
Because she wouldn’t give me some pussy
I tore her panties off and took the pussy
I beat her
Then said to her, “Baby, I love you so much.
You’re so precious to me, let me kiss you.”
And she let me
Then I beat her for letting me
Because I was drunk
Too much rum
I beat her
Too much weed
I beat her
Too much coke
I beat her
My you are so precious to me
I beat her
My I love you so much baby
I beat her
Because she was faithful
Because she was patient
I beat her
While my child stood terrified
I beat her
Kicked her
Sat on her
Punched her in the mouth
In my madness
Because she said the wrong word
Because she said nothing
Because she said the right word
Because she said too many words
Because she had a thought
Independent of mine
I beat her
Knocked her too the floor
Because she called the police
I beat her
How could she call the white man on me
As Black as I was
I beat her
Because she called her mama
I beat her
Because she called the operator
I beat her
Because she picked up the telephone
I beat her
Because she left me and I found her hiding in the closet
I beat her because I took her to Mexico and she wasn’t happy
I beat her because I took her to New York
And she didn’t smile
I beat her
Because I was sick
And she told me so.
I beat her.


Eternal Woman (I Shot Him)I shot him
Because he loved me
He loved me so much he came home smelling
Like his other bitch’s pussy
I shot him
I didn’t kill him
But I shot him
Because I got the phone bill
And saw he’d called his other bitch
On my birthday
I shot him
Cause I got papers on him
Yeah, I got papers on the motherfucker
To use his filthy language
I shot him
And I ain’t sharing him with nobody
I don’t care what the Muslims say
Bout a nigguh can have four wives
I don’t care what the Holy Qur’an say
I don’t care bout the African tradition of polygamy
I don’t care how many mo women it is for every man
I shot him
I don’t care if women are turning lesbian and bisexual
Cause they don’t want no man
I want my man. I love my man
But I shot him!




Testimony, a Love Song

Eternal Man
I remember when I met you, woman
The feeling has never left me
What is the magic of you, what is the mystery
Every day, you are there,
In my hair
In my skin
I hear you blowing in the wind

Eternal Woman

I remember when I first me you, man
You were strong then
Your hair was neat
Your fingernails were clean and cut
Your skin was glowing
Your ears were clean
You were confident, secure
Your voice was strong and commanding
I was proud to meet you
Had heard of you, heard your name
Knew you were a man of truth
You know I did everything to please you
Spoiled you, worshipped you above God
That was my sin
If the years have taught me anything
You are very much human
Sometimes less than human
When you beat me
Sometimes more than human
When you made love to me.

Eternal Man
I have learned to listen to you, woman
You been right many times
When I was wrong
You knew what to do from the beginning
I didn’t but pretended I did
You begged me for years
Do right, nigguh, do right
What did I say
Shut up, bitch!
And kicked your ass
Only a fool would hurt a flower
Only a fool would destroy a rose.

Eternal Woman

If you love me so much
Why you treat me like you do
If you love me so much
Why you treat me like you do?


Eternal Man

I make no excuses
Word is bond
If you cannot believe my words
We have no bond
I will keep trying til my words are truth
I went blind
No longer saw God
No longer cared for Him
Lost faith in myself, most of all
But look
The Spirit of God is upon me!

Eternal Woman

You act like the same nigguh to me
You don’t respect me as a woman
You don’t respect me as a human
It’s your way or no way
True, you haven’t beat me lately
But you act like you will
If I oppose you
Who can live like this?
I refuse to live in fear
I refuse
If you can’t make me feel secure
I will find someone else who can
If you cannot make me feel at peace
I will find someone else who can
If you cannot treat me with respect
I will find someone else who can!

Eternal Man

I understand
And I submit
To truth
I submit
To God.

Eternal Woman

I’m going to see, man
You’ve told me millions of words
I will see
I want to believe you, but it’s hard
I want to trust you
But it’s hard
You’ve lied so much
You’ve done such terrible things to me
You’re the worse person I know
What else is wrong with you?
You’re too aggressive
You’re too extreme
You drink too much
You fuck too much
You cuss too much
You shout too much!

Eternal Man

Why you let me love you again and again
If I’m so terrible
King Kong
I want to take you serious
But sometimes
You are full of hot air and gibberish!



Eternal Woman

You’re right
There is some good in you
We have good times together
Sometimes
You’re really a good person
But you always negate the good
With some terrible stuff
Sometimes you make me nervous
Sometimes I can’t relax with you
Sometimes I don’t’ feel safe and secure with you
Get yourself together
Don’t blow up every minute
I’m trying to control myself
I’m not perfect either
I have my faults
You know them better than anyone
I’m working on myself
Work on yourself
Take care of your business
And come at me right!
Where is your faith in Allah
You profess to the world
Keep your word, demonstrate your word
By your actions
And I’ll be your friend forever
I’ll be your very best friend.


Moment in Paradise
Now that we are in heaven
Will the scars of hell ever heal?
Let’s take a midnight swim
Don’t be afraid, my beloved
The tide will return soon
Let us talk until then
We have not talked in so long
We have not been our true selves
In so long
I don’t even know who you are
Isn’t that strange
To be with a person
To love a person
Yet you do not know their worth
That is why we came to this land
We left the wilderness
To see who we really are
My beloved, look, the tide is in
Come, let’s take that midnight swim.

II

When the sun comes up, we are up
She is making mind tea with lemon and honey
Raul’s yellow boat still parked in the water
Maybe his nets have caught another shark
If so he will ask me to drive him to town
So he can sell it for 50 pesos
My beloved washing dishes on the shore
A gayle on her head
Just think, I have never told her how beautiful she is to me
Hell put chains on our hearts
Nothing is more painful
Than loving someone
Yet ignorance separates you
My beloved
One day I shall know who you are
And love you a thousand times more
For now, let us enjoy this moment in paradise
Come, massage me
Here in the shade
Rub around my neck and shoulders
Around my waist
Then I’ll massage you.
--from Selected Poems, and In The Name of Love,
Marvin X, Laney College Theatre production, 1981.



Poet Ptah Mitchell



Minister of Ceremony Hunia Bradley








Poet, Musician
Phavia Kujichagulia




















Actress, poet, director
Ayodele Nzinga













Actress, poet
Aries Jordan

Producer/poet Marvin X and Violinist Tarika Lewis

Vocalist/Actress Mechelle LaChaux
Video link to Mechelle reading Parable of the Cell Phone
(caution--Contains adult language):
http://www.facebook.com/n/?video%2Fvideo.php&v=386672567980&comments&mid=357fa34G458d6d2eG23f926fG3b&n_m=jmarvinx%40yahoo.com


For his Mythology of Love, a poetic manhood and womanhood rites of passage, Marvin X has chosen Nature Boy and Beautiful Flower as essential songs.The ritual will be performed by members of the First Poet's Church of the Latter Day Egyptian Revisionists. Date and place to be announced. Invited artists include singer Mechelle LaChaux, violinist Tarika Lewis, harpist Destiny Muhammad, percussionist Tacuma King, guitarist Augusta Collins, O'Town Passions singing group, poets Phavia Kujichagulia, Ayodele Nzinga, Aries Jordan, Ptah Allah El and Paradise; choreographers Linda Johnson and Raynetta Rayzetta. Actors Geoffrey Grier, Eugene Allen and Jermaine Marsh. Libations by Rev. Mutima Imani, Minister of Ceremony Hunia Bradley. Scene designer Renaldo Ricketts.




Associate Producer
Geoffrey Grier

Producers include Center of Hope Church, Post Newspaper Group, Lower Bottom Playaz, San Francisco Recovery Theatre and Conway Jones, Jr. If you or your organization would like to be a sponsor, please contact Marvin X: jmarvinx@yahoo.com