Aries Jordan: Poem on the Shaman's Ordeal by Fire

The Shaman's Ordeal by Fire

                              
photo Gene Hazzard

You say "I love you" but can't stand you
We both laugh the feeling is mutual
Student  Teacher
Dear Teacher, have you learned something from me?
I have learned so much about my history about standing up for myself

One cannot be a punk ass bitch around you
Thick skin a must 

overbearing
like night and day
true  Gemini
12 personalities
1.Brown liquor Nigga
2. intellect
3. Historian
4.OG
5.Plato Negro
6. Dirty old man
7. The lazy Prophet
8. Poetic mad man
9. Advisor
10. Hustler Supreme
the last two personalities don't yet have a name
always a truth teller

Though you think i don't listen
I do sometimes
Though i think you don't listen to me
you don't
only sometimes

you create magic with your words
a journey with your pen

I can't do more than 3 to 4 hours around you

too intense

I gots to go

You say I am  square and you're out the box

say I am steeped in religiosity

i say I am me

You drift off sometimes to places unseen
You say all teachers take students through the ordeal by fire

I say "Is that right?!"

More like ordeal of Madness

I don't play that shit

Thank you for making me a better writer and better person

--Aries Jordan

 

The Shaman Speaks to Neophyte     photo Gene Hazzard you come into my world of fire disturbed you got burned what foolishness is this when the world is ablaze do they not make fires to put out fires? In my fire is love the only reason for being engulfing the flames burn away all illusions only the essential shall remain the loving self beyond youth and age beyond preference want desire only the spirit needs shall be met no ego desires need apply it is dross like a candle in the wind the flame cannot last the student and teacher dance only to transcend the normal naked world that bland self taught by mother/father on to the shaman world beyond the brink across the chasm that is our task if you come with me all the way to the end no half stepping no diversion into the normal this journey is to the meta reality you can go there with me or fly into fires beyond my torch of freedom with discipline beyond lover husband and wife to the spirit truth without name yet it is all there is in essential time we may not like each other but again the need is there we try escape to no avail humankind is not for us only the divine so try if you must to escape see how we come into each other's arms only to avoid the kiss some fear remains until we understand there no escape the matter was settled the moment we met. We are one in the sun in the wind in the fire of love. --Marvin X 6/14/13

Mandela receiving intensive care CCTV News - CNTV English

Mandela receiving intensive care CCTV News - CNTV English

Marvin X at San Francisco Juneteenth this weekend

photo Don J. Usner

photo Gene Hazzard

At San Francisco's Juneteenth, Marvin X will autograph books and exhibit his archives as well as the archives of Dr. Nathan Hare and Dr. Julia Hare. SF Juneteenth is on Fillmore Street, Saturday and Sunday.

History of Juneteenth

JUNETEENTH, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, is a holiday in the United States honoring African American heritage by commemorating the announcement of the abolition of slavery in the U.S. State of Texas in 1865. Celebrated on June 19, the term is aportmanteau of June and nineteenth, and is recognized as a state holiday or state holiday observance in 40 states of the United States.

OBSERVATION The state of Texas is widely considered the first U.S. state to begin Juneteenth celebrations with informal observances taking place for over a century; it has been an official state holiday since 1890. It is considered a "partial staffing holiday", meaning that state offices do not close, but some employees will be using a floating holiday to take the day off. Schools are not closed, but most public schools in Texas are already into summer vacation by June 19th. Its observance has spread to many other states, with a few celebrations even taking place in other countries.
As of June 2011, 40 states and the District of Columbia have recognized Juneteenth as either a state holiday or state holiday observance; these are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Notes from the Master Teacher of Black Studies to Marvin X: Dr. Nathan Hare

Dr. M,

Also folded in the book with the birthday greeting card to me from Max Stanford, aka Dr. Muhammad Ahmed (most feared black militant by FBI in the late 1960s) is a note from a boy named Cadence, saying “I love Dr. Julia Hare.”

Nathan

From: Nathan Hare [mailto:nhare@pacbell.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2013 6:01 AM
To: Marvin X Jackmon (jmarvinx@yahoo.com)
Subject: Endless Archives and Bottomless Pockets

Marvin,

I notice you left the birthday card from Max Stanford (Muhammad Ahmed), I guess because it was tucked in one of a stack of books. One of them, “Black Writers of America: A Comprehensive Anthology” (Macmillan, 1972), has me and Tolson in it (pre-Great Debaters, Wiley College, where he practiced and James Farmer was a student before Tolson moved on to Langston and left debating for poetry and drama, aiming at Broadway and hitting Hollywood); indeed the editors   discuss Tolson and celebrate him as one of my teachers in the preface to my essay, “The Challenge of a Black Scholar,” I see they gave it a section all by itself, “Essay” under  “Part VI: The Present Generation: Since 1945,” though near the tail end of the book, just before Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, and The Blues, in that order.

Talk about black studies, which they also mentioned, the article was also reprinted in a number of places, like such other articles as “Black Ecology,” in a number of different languages around the world. In fact I just got a call on Friday from a University of Pennsylvania black female professor  of ethics (as you know they worry about what’s right and wrong -- while I worry about what’s right, I know what’s wrong ), wanting to interview me on the article. I told her I’d have to take a look at it and get back to you, because I’ve forgotten what I said in it, especially since I was writing it while I was in jail in San Francisco (they didn’t let me keep anything but a paperback I had with me when arrested, Karl Mannheims “Idelogy and Utopia.” No pencil, so I used my thumbnail to mark off passages I wanted to quote or paraphrase.  But I didn’t just use Mannheim, lest black intellectuals say it’s not black enough, not even black studies in the first place. And anyway, how come you didn’t mention Moses.

I also don’t want you to take the book, “Medicine in the Ghetto” too lightly, not even my essay in it. Its editor, John Norman, was the director of the conference put on by the Harvard Medical School at Wentworth-by-the-Sea in New Hampshire in the late spring of 1969, but he was black, as were most of the participants. On my panel was the now late Charles Sanders, then the managing editor of Ebony magazine, when magazines were magazines and print media was print, The chairman of the panel, I believe, was the president of Meharry Medical College (I know he was the one who invited me). I forget the other person or two.

Some people think black studies is equivalent only to ancient history (“contributionism” a term I coined in the early 1960s at Howard – I note that white individuals have taken it up but could find no reference before the early 1960s, and certainly I coined it for myself and my students at Howard. Indeed circa 1970 the black sociologist, West Indian, at Harvard, wrote an essay in the” Crimson,” in which he referred to me and “Contributionsm” but added two categories. Jancie Hale Bensin in her book on black children, their cultural roots and learnin styles, summarizes Patterson’s  article but gives “contributionism” not to me as Patterson had, but to him. (Patterson may have mentioned me but kept the term for himself, a common ploy of black intellectuals (creatures who think black studies is equivalent only to an account of how  the first physician or something was black, Imhotep, and arguments over the proper spelling of his name, Immutef, or the first god was black (wouldn’t you know it?), the first devil, to the first person to make a spool or a piece of thread, etcetera. That’s one reason black studies and black intellectuality in general got bogged down and locked in antiquity from 1969 to 2009; and only came out to wail and bash the first black president for not picking them up and flinging them into the kingdom of snow white liberation.

As regards the stuff in my storage in the office building, I admit I wasn’t up to the challenge of taking those heavy file cabinets of files packed and crammed in there last Sunday morning. Don’t know whether that’s worth just going one day back again and wrenching the cabinets out and seeing what if anything we need to keep that’s not in current use. If so we would need Ali or some such heavyweight to help, I think, to boost the meager might of two old men and a pretty woman or two; although it was precisely two women of the physical stature to rival Ali who crammed them in there in the first place. The ringleader was a literary enthusiast and skimmed and got away with my big volume of the complete works of Shakespeare and God knows what. We weren’t thinking about archives -- at least I wasn’t. It’s like one continual try in a marathon game of finders keepers.

It’s good you’re making a movement out of the Archives Project, just don’t make me the sacrificial lamb. I’m trying to work my way out of this quagmire, this nightmare of deprivation, before I wrap my smothering blanket around me and lie down to pleasant dreams.

Hotep (is that black enough for you?),

Nathan

Review: Marvin X's In the Crazy House Called America, essays

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Review: In the Crazy House Called America

Marvin X Offers A Healing Peek Into His Psyche


By Junious Ricardo Stanton



Rarely is a brother secure and honest enough with himself to reveal his innermost thoughts, emotions or his most hellacious life experiences. For most men it would be a monumental feat just to share/bare his soul with his closest friends, but to do so to perfect strangers would be unthinkable, unless he had gone through the fires of life and emerged free of the dross that tarnishes his soul. Marvin X, poet, playwright, author and essayist does just that in a self-published book entitled In the Crazy House Called America.

This latest piece from Marvin X offers a peek into his soul and his psyche. He lets the reader know he is hip to the rabid oppression the West heaps upon people of color, especially North American Africans, while at the same time revealing the knowledge gleaned from his days as a student radical, black nationalist revolutionary forger of the Black Arts Movement, husband, father lover, a dogger of women that did not spare him the degradation and agony of descending into the abyss of crack addiction, abusive and toxic relationships and family tragedy.

Perhaps because of the knowledge gained as a member of the Nation of Islam, and his experiences as one of the prime movers of the cultural revolution of the '60s, the insights he shares In the Crazy House Called America are all the keener. Marvin writes candidly of his pain, bewilderment and depression of losing his son to suicide. He shares in a very powerful way, his own out of body helplessness as he wallowed in the dregs of an addiction that threatened to destroy his soul and the mess his addictions made of his life and relationships with those he loved.

But he is not preachy and this is not an autobiography. He has already been there and done that. In sharing his story and the wisdom he has gleaned from his life experiences and looking at the world through the eyes of an artist/healer, Marvin X serves as a modern day shaman/juju man who in order to heal himself and his people ventures into the spirit realm to confront the soul devouring demons and mind pulverizing dragons; he is temporarily possessed by them, heroically struggles to rebuke their power before they destroy him; which enables him to return to this realm, tell us what it is like, prove redemption is possible, thereby empowering himself/ us and helping to heal us. He touches on a myriad of topics as he raps and writes about himself and current events.

Reading this book you know he knows what it is like to come face to face with and do battle with the insanity and death this society has in store for all Africans. Marvin X talks about his sexual relations/dysfunction, drugs, media and free speech, sports, black political power or the lack thereof, the war on drugs and the current War on Terrorism, nothing is off limits. He includes reviews of music, theater as well as film, but not as some smarter/ holier than thou, elitist observer.

Marvin X writes as one actively engaged in life, including its pain and suffering. He lets us know he was a willing and active participant in his addiction, how it impacted his decision making, his role as a parent, his male-female "relationships", his ability to be creative within a movement to liberate African people and the world from the corruption of Caucasian hegemony.

Marvin X is in recovery and it has not been easy for him. As a writer/healer he still has the voice of a revolutionary poet/playwright, it is a voice we need to listen and pay attention to. He has survived his own purgatory and emerged stronger and more committed to life and saving his people. As North American Africans (his term to differentiate us from our continental and diasporic brethren) he sees the toll the insanity of this culture takes on us. His culturally induced self-destructive lifestyle choices and the death of his son is a testament to how life threatening and lethal this society can be.

But Marvin X also talks about spiritual redemption, the ability to transcend even the most horrific experiences with resiliency and determination so that one gets a glimpse of one's own divine potential. This book is an easy read which makes it all the more profound. In The Crazy House Called America is for brothers especially. It is a book all black men should grab hold of and digest, if for no other reason than to experience just how redemptively healing and liberating being honest can be.

Obama: Big "Brother" is Watching You!

There is no doubt: President Obama is Bush on steroids! Now those of us in the hood know all too often the black cop is worse than the white cop, the black jailer is worse than the white jailer, the black teacher is worse than the white teacher. Of course, as per presidents, since the end of colonialism, Africa has had a plethora of presidents-for-life, although much of their wretched behavior was learned from their colonial education, especially in political science, where they observed and were traumatized by the brutality of the colonial masters. This is not to say all was peaches and cream before the white masters arrived, but certainly after their arrival, the white masters far outdid the pre-colonial native rulers in brutality, wretchedness and thievery, e.g., the Congo comes to mind and of course Apartheid South Africa. We have the political history of the Caribbean to document the wretchedness of white men in black face or as they say in the Caribbean "black men with white hearts."

Let us then end our final escapade with black romanticism, i.e., a black face will save us, will liberate us, will free us from our myriad ills, too numerous to note. For sure, we must free ourselves, but black skin alone will not save us. We must, I believe Dr. John Henrik Clark said it best, maintain the best of our cultural traditions and high morals. For sure, we cannot expect to become truly free in a free market capitalist system that is rooted in slavery, now called wage slavery. We cannot become the Michael Jordan's who don't mind pimping Asians to make tennis shoes for fifty cents, then pimp the ghetto and white America as well, selling the shoes for a hundred or two hundred dollars per pair.

As per President Obama, I confess that I was one of the starry-eyed idealists who supported his initial run but by the end of his first term, in was clear to me he was in the tradition of those African politicians mentioned above who mastered the white man's political science to become brutalizers of their people.
Of course, President Obama (and global capitalism in general) does not discriminate. Clearly, the actions of the Obama administration is, indeed, the Bush administration on steroids, as per the constitutional rights of American citizens. I never imagined, except for the treatment of North American Africans, that citizens could be killed without charges, without trial, in the name of fighting terrorism. No one knows terrorism better than North American Africans who have been subjected to the worst treatment ever given to human beings on the face of the earth. And don't tell me about Jews. Hitler learned how to treat the Jews from American Christians!

North American Africans have been subjects of spies and snitches since slavery, many slave revolts were aborted by snitches who warned ole mass. The FBI originated with spying on Noble Drew Ali and Marcus Garvey, yet we never thought the day would come when every American would be subject to Big Brother Obama, listening to our every thought, every email, every blog, every cell phone call.

This is not the America we were taught about in Civics and political science. This is the American Gulag, the number one prison house of the world, home of the world's leading gun seller and terrorist who now labels every freedom fighter a terrorist if their agenda is not in sync with America's.

It is hard to believe Big Brother goes around with a list of people to murder, American citizens included. Was there any reason (except white supremacy in black face) for the drone murder of Anwar Awlaki and his son, without charges and trial?

Is it now necessary to spy on the press, the opposition and loyal citizens? Obama is now in the tradition of Richard Nixon!

Perhaps, we should not be so personal, after all, this is the capitalist system on its deathbed, way pass the emergency room.

When will the passive, pitiful, slothful, deaf, dumb and blind Americans wake up from their world of make believe? For sure, the present political/economic system cannot save you, you must rise up as people around the world are doing at this hour, for sure, if you do not initiate an American Spring, the winter of your discontent has arrived!
--Marvin X
6/7/13

Marvin X is a free thinker.

Chokwe Lumumba Elected Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi--Black Power!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 4, 2013

NATIONAL CONTACT:  Kali Akuno

PHONE:  323.422.6025 

LOCAL JACKSON CONTACT: Chokwe Antar Lumumba

PHONE: 601.629.7684 

Chokwe Lumumba Elected Mayor of Jackson, MS with Clear Mandate

The People of Jackson Have Spoken: “One City, One Aim, One Destiny”

With more than 85% of the vote, the people of Jackson clearly voiced their support for Chokwe Lumumba’s vision of a unified, democratic Jackson.  Lumumba, an attorney with a long record of grassroots activism and leadership in Jackson and nationwide, offered his heartfelt thanks to residents for their faith and confidence in his candidacy.

“I want to thank each and everyone who made this victory possible. I am grateful for your vote and your trust.  I am committed to upholding that trust,” says Lumumba .  “ This has been a team effort from the very beginning.  We have always said, ‘The people must decide.’ And the people have spoken for a revitalized Jackson that works for all of us, not just the few. ”

The hotly contested race drew national attention as Lumumba is considered one of the most progressive candidates ever to be elected mayor of a major city – particularly in the South.   The Mayor Elect was outspent by more than 4-1 by his primary opponent as well as the target of vicious attack ads.  Despite the challenges, Lumumba stayed focus on issues of economic justice, democracy and the underlying root causes of Jackson’s social problems.

“The vast majority of people saw through the smear tactics and really responded to our message and vision,” says Safiya Omari, campaign manager for Elect Chokwe Lumumba Mayor.  “We have faith in Jackson.  Our people know the deal.  Chokwe speaks to their everyday reality.”

Campaigning with the message “One City, One Aim, One Destiny,” the campaign brought together a wide range of constituencies across the city committed to a progressive vision of a just and equitable Jackson.   An important component of the citywide organizing effort is the Peoples Assemblies – grassroots leaders from across the city that have been working together with Lumumba to build a people centered policy agenda. 

Says Lumumba, “This has been a grassroots campaign from the start.  And my commitment to listening to you, the people of Jackson, won’t end with the campaign.  I look forward to working with everyone committed to building a just and thriving city.  We have challenges ahead.  We have work to do but I believe we are up to the task before us.”

Notes from the Master Teacher of Black Studies: Dr. Nathan Hare

Marvin,

I see you’re still working on it, still a poet. Dr. Ruth Love said she was going to be sending somebody to help with the archives.

Speaking of Asa and the maroon within us, I first learned about the maroons in a course in “Negro History” in 1948 (textbook by Carter G. Woodson) as a high school sophomore at Toussaint L’ouverture High in Slick, Oklahoma.

Something pathetic,, as Harold Cruse would say, about the fact that a scholar of the magnitude of Asa Hilliard would have to be hipping black people to the Maroons at this late date.

By the way, I just now learned for the first time that Asa was also, like me and Khalid, a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

This just shows the confusion of the concept of blackness in our midst, when Negro colleges founded by white post-slavery racists we so proudly hail as “black colleges, or for reasons that call for speculation, “historically black colleges.” When did that history begin? When were they not black colleges. Why are they black colleges now. Why is it only historic? Does it mean their blackness has past and they were black historically but no longer?

Coincidentally, you just called with potentially good news, so I say so much for philosophy. Enough already. Now when I get to Heaven I can put on my shoes and sing and Suzie-Q and  fox trot and huckle-buck all over all over God’s heaven. I might even buck-dance if I wind up with some bucks.

Nathan

Note: Dr. Nathan Hare is the Father of Black Studies. He formulated the first curricula for Black Studies at a major American university. For his radical ideas and activism, he was removed from the faculty of Howard University and San Francisco State University. Marvin X is organizing his archives for acquisition. www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Marvin X and his Academy of da Corner will be at Berkeley's Juneteenth Festival, Sunday, June 23, 2013

Marvin X at his Academy of da Corner table at the Berkeley Flea Market, the crossroads of
Bay Area North American African culture and art. His table is described as "The Militant table"!
He will be at the Berkeley Juneteenth Festival on Sunday, June 23, 2013. The festival is one block south of the Ashby BART station. Marvin X will autograph books and display his archives as well as the books and archives of Dr. Nathan Hare and Dr. Julia Hare, also the works of his student, Aries Jordan.

                              
                              Poet Aries Jordan, a student at Marvin X's Academy of da Corner;

also serving as an intern on his Community Archives Project, assisting

the Master Teacher assemble the Dr. Nathan Hare and Dr. Julia Hare archives

Master Teacher/Minister of Poetry

Marvin X

photo Don J. Usner

Contact information:

Marvin X

510-200-4164

jmarvinx@yahoo.com

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

New York Times: Harlem Memorial for Malcolm X's Grandson

Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Ilyasah Shabazz spoke during the memorial service Thursday for Malcolm Shabazz at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem.

“He idolized his grandfather,” Ms. Shabazz told about 250 people gathered at First Corinthian Baptist Church, where her sister Malaak is a member. Mr. Shabazz, 28, became fond of telling people, even relatives: “I am the seventh descendant of Malcolm X, and I am his first male heir.”

“And we would look at him like, ‘Really, Buddy?’ ” Ms. Shabazz said, eliciting laughter. “But it turns out that Malcolm would step into his grandfather’s shoes.”

At the memorial service, family and friends remembered Mr. Shabazz, who was fatally beaten on May 9 in Mexico City, as a reflection of his grandfather. They also sought to celebrate the man he was becoming, looking beyond the troubles of his youth: the fire he started at 12, which killed his grandmother, Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz; his stints in prison; and his own violent end.

The police in Mexico City arrested two waiters at a downtown bar for his murder, in what the city prosecutor called a dispute over a bill. Mr. Shabazz had traveled there to meet with a labor activist and friend who had been deported.

“He was an emerging light,” the imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood, said during the service.

In recent years, Mr. Shabazz had traveled throughout the United States and abroad for speaking engagements. The trips allowed him to escape from the shadow cast by his tumultuous youth and to step into a role that his grandfather played later in life, that of a human-rights activist. Mr. Shabazz spoke about social justice and rallied support for black causes worldwide.

“His sincerity connected with people instantly,” said Etan Thomas, a former player for the N.B.A., who recalled the time he and Mr. Shabazz spoke to about 500 young men at the prison on Rikers Island as part of President Obama’s fatherhood initiative. “That’s power.”

“Malcolm,” he added, “was just scratching the surface of where he wanted to go.”

Others spoke of the paradox of the family. Mr. Shabazz’s great-grandfather, Earl Little, was an outspoken Baptist minister and supporter of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. In 1931, his body was reportedly found lying across trolley tracks in Lansing, Mich. Then, in 1965, his grandfather, Malcolm X, was assassinated inside a ballroom at the Audubon Theater in Washington Heights, at age 39.

The Shabazz family, like the Kennedys and the Rockefellers, has been marked by tragedy, said the Rev. Conrad Tillard, a former minister of the Nation of Islam’s Mosque No. 7, where Malcolm X preached. “They have gone through so much and suffered so greatly,” he said. “But in spite of all of the challenges and suffering, they continue to hold on.”

Other speakers included the author and activist Sister Souljah; Adelaide L. Sanford, vice chancellor emeritus of the New York State Board of Regents; and Mayor Ernest D. Davis of Mount Vernon, in Westchester County. There were spoken word performances, and the R&B singer Jaheim sang a song he had written for Mr. Shabazz.

Relatives and close friends shared what Mr. Shabazz’s grandmother, Betty Shabazz, often said: “Find the good, and praise it.”

Mr. Shabazz was remembered as a bookworm, a charmer, and a young warrior.

The service started with a procession of African drummers, followed by Mr. Shabazz’s two aunts and other relatives. During the two-hour service, a 10-minute video presentation was played on a giant screen, entitled “Malcolm Latif Shabazz.” One segment featured an interview with Press TV, a news outlet in Iran, about the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida.

Mr. Shabazz expressed his sympathy, then noted, after he listed about a half-dozen other names, that Trayvon Martin’s death was not an isolated episode. “There are hundreds of black men that are getting murdered throughout the country,” he said, his eyes intent, “with impunity.”