Marvin X will autograph books at the Blues, Brews & BBQ, Monterey Bay

Marvin X will autograph books at the Blues fest this weekend, Saturday & Sunday, July 26-27, 2014.
He will be at the Post Newspaper booth. Check him out!

Crazy House Blues

by Marvin X

You in da nut house baby
but you still wanna say
you ain't crazy

You in da nut house baby
but still  say ya ain't crazy

You in denial baby
please take yo medication
you in denial baby
please take yo medication

listen ta ya doctor
enjoy yo vacation

talk ta yaself
in da middle of da night
talk ta yaself baby
in da middle of da night
tell yaself baby
everyting go be all ite

I be here when ya git out
I'm all da way down faya
I be here when ya git out
I'm all da way down faya
when ya come baby

I'm just go love ya

just know one thang baby
ma love is true
just know one thang baby
ma love is true
Git yaself tagether
so we can do what we gotta do
Git yaself tagether
so we can do what we gotta do.

I'm out here hustling'
trying ta make a dime
I'm out here hustling
tryin ta make a dime
You can help me
if you can
you can help me
be a better man.

Ya love is good gul
make a old man do a flip
ya love is good gul
make a old man do a flip

If me and you was on the Titanic
We wouldn't even jump ship
If me and you was on the Titanic
we wouldn't even jump ship

We go down lovin  gul
ta hell wit da  ship

We go down lovin gul
ta hell wit da sinking ship.
--Marvin X
7/18/14

Marvin X with the Black Arts Movement Poets Choir and Arkestra, Malcolm X Jazz Festival, Oakland, May 17, 2014 (David Murray on sax, Earl Davis on trumpet)

Country Woman Blues
for ma man, Bobby Womack, RIP
I'm down here in da country
grape vines down the street
don't worry bout nothing
country people got everything ta eat

down here in da country
grape vines down the street
lookin fa a country woman
ain't worried bout nothing ta eat!

got plenty henny too
ain't worried bout nothing
when dat country gul come through

she say daddy I wanna to be wit you
wherever you are
city or country 
cause I know you a star

Love dat country woman
so sweet  so true
just treat her nice
she'll be there fa you

she just wanna laugh
please don't make her cry
she just wanna laugh
please don't make her cry
she'll be witya
til the day ya die!
--Marvin X

City Woman Blues

I loveya baby
but ya just too crazy fa me
I loveya baby
but ya just too crazy fa me
go on back where ya came from
I'll see ya when I see

took ya all round world
you still wanna act a fool
took ya all round world
but ya still wanna act a fool

go on back where ya came from
need to go back ta school.
--Marvin X

Angela Davis, Marvin X, Sonia Sanchez, Oakland CA, 2014

Marvin X and Amiri Baraka, RIP

Rev. Blandon Reems, Aries Jordan, Toya Carter and Marvin X on a visit to Alameda County Juvenile Hall

Marvin X at rally for Palestine, Seattle WA, July 13, 2014

Black Bird Press News & Review: Poems for Palestine, Egypt, Syria by Marvin X and Mohja Kahf

Black Bird Press News & Review: Poems for Palestine, Egypt, Syria by Marvin X and Mohja Kahf

Marvin X at rally for Palestine, Seattle WA, 2014

Dr. Mohja Kahf says this chapbook is the beginning of Muslim American literature, 1968

Dr. Cornel West and Marvin X

 Marvin X interviewing his friend, Amiri Baraka, Santa Fe New Mexico, Lannan Foundation, 2009

Theatre Review: Love Balm For My Spiritchild

I attended the performance of the play Love Balm for my spirit child at San Francisco's Brava Theatre.
Painful. Disgusting. Traumatic. Mothers giving manhood training to boyz. Surely we know mother has done a grand job, and yet it is a utter failure, even though I am the product of manhood training by my mother. Don't you know she did all she could do, but by the eleventh grade I was so out of control Mama put me in a rooming house to get me out of her house and her business. After all, she had had three additional children by another man since she and my dad separated and divorced. But like Boyz in the Hood, I was all in my mama's business and she put me out of her nest.

I guess Mom was busy and so was I: she had her last child, Tommy, almost the same time I had my first child, Marvin. My son and my young brother, grew up as brothers.

So Brava Theatre, Love Balm for my Spiritchild. Poetic, sometimes abstract, but Ayodele can make the abstract sound good, and yet her life is so much in the moment. She didn't know I was in the theatre, but I saw every minute of the play. She was the major player, the diva, as always. No one can out shine Ayodele on stage. It is not only the power of her voice, her mastering of theatre craft, her being mentored by Marvin X, no, it is Ayo herself, under her own power, yet ever conscious of elders and ancestors.

But this was a group effort, so clearly a demonstration of the tragedy of our times, although Diop said there can be no African tragedy only tragicomedy. And I heard the tragicomedy in this production. But imagine one male dancer represented the male gender of a nation of people. So wonderful to see male dancers, so wonderful to see how the hip hop generation has incorporated their choreography into modern dance, alas, African dance--modern dance will never admit it's African contribution. Ask Katheran Dunham.

The story line was utterly depressing, Mothers weeping over sons shot dead by the police. For me, I have been dealing with white racists killing young black men since Emmitt Till, then Denzill Dowel in Richmond that gave birth to the Black Panther Party. Then Little Bobby Hutton, shot down in cold blood by the OPD, then fifteen year old Melvin Black, which we addressed in a rally at the Oakland Auditorium with Minister Farrakhan, Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, Marvin X, et al., 1979

Alas, the police of killing of black men stopped, then started the drive by killings. I found myself in a group of mothers who had lost their sons in drive by killings. I was overwhelmed and dropped out of the group. Tonight I was again confronted with those mothers, weeping, mourning, dancing, sharing, embracing, loving the lost they shared. Great choreography or call it direction, but great. And I cannot say enough about the male dancer. Let him dance and tell the story of his brothers. Somebody hep me!
--Marvin X

Crazy House Blues

You in da nut house baby
but you still wanna say
you ain't crazy

You in da nut house baby
but still wanna say ya ain't crazy

You in denial baby
please take yo medication
you in denial baby
please take yo medication

listen ta ya doctor
enjoy yo vacation

talk ta yaself
in da middle of da night

talk ta yaself baby
in da middle of da night
tell yaself
everyting go be all ite

I be here when ya git out
I'm all da way down faya
I be here when ya git out
I'm all da way down faya

just know one thang
ma love is true
just know one thang baby
ma love is true

Git yaself tagether
so we can do what we gotta do
Git yaself tagether
so we can do what we gotta do.

I'm out here hustling'
trying ta make a dime
I'm out here hustling
tryin ta make a dime
You can help me
if you can
you can help me
be a better man.

Ya love is good gul
make a old man do a flip
ya love is good gul
make a old man do a flip

If me and you was on the Titanic
We wouldn't even jump ship

If me and you was on the Titanic
we wouldn't even jump ship

We go down lovin  gul
ta hell wit da  ship

We go down lovin gul
ta hell wit da sinking ship.
--Marvin X
7/18/14

Barbarians - The Vandals are today called Zionists

Four boys dead from airstrike on Gaza beach

Through Lens, 4 Boys Dead by Gaza Shore

By TYLER HICKS

JULY 16, 2014

The aftermath of an airstrike on a beach in Gaza City on Wednesday. Four young Palestinian boys, all cousins, were killed. CreditTyler Hicks/The New York Times

GAZA CITY — My day here began at 6 a.m. Photographing something as unpredictable as war still has a routine.

It is important to be out the door at first light to document the destruction of the last night’s bombings. By midmorning, I check in at the hospital’s morgue to see if families have come to pick up the dead for burial.

When the routine is broken, it is because things can go horribly wrong in an instant. That is how it happened in Libya in 2011, when three colleagues and I were taken captive by government soldiers and our driver was killed.

On Wednesday, that sudden change of fortune came to four young Palestinian boys playing on a beach in Gaza City.

I had returned to my small seaside hotel around 4 p.m. to file photos to New York when I heard a loud explosion. My driver and I rushed to the window to see what had happened. A small shack atop a sea wall at the fishing port had been struck by an Israeli bomb or missile and was burning. A young boy emerged from the smoke, running toward the adjacent beach.

I grabbed my cameras and was putting on body armor and a helmet when, about 30 seconds after the first blast, there was another. The boy I had seen running was now dead, lying motionless in the sand, along with three other boys who had been playing there.

By the time I reached the beach, I was winded from running with my heavy armor. I paused; it was too risky to go onto the exposed sand. Imagine what my silhouette, captured by an Israeli drone, might look like as a grainy image on a laptop somewhere in Israel: wearing body armor and a helmet, carrying cameras that could be mistaken for weapons. If children are being killed, what is there to protect me, or anyone else?

Poem: Gaza Concentration CAMP by Marvin X

GAZA Concentration CAMP

There are those who say we must restore peace to GAZA

Peace in the concentration camp

Peace of genocide

Peace no protest allowed

Submit to starvation

humiliation

stunted life 
hell on earth

No protest
peace before anything

Before justice

Before life even

peace

Let the people of GAZA sing silent night

Holy night

All is peaceful

All is right

Under the shadow of death

Let there be peace

No justice

Peace

With boots on our necks

Mass murder but peace

At all costs

Hamas Rockets to no avail
Iron Dome is our gift from USA
Iron Domes is saving our asses

From land, air, sea you attack

Mighty Mouse you are

Iron Dome Mouse

Look at you

Wild wild West beast

No thought of justice

Just peace

Peace be still.

--Marvin X

7/17/14

The Los Angeles Black Book Expo nominates Marvin X to receive the LABBX Spoken Worlds Pavilion Humanitarian Achievement Award of the Year, for unlimited service to the community of Poetry and Spoken Word, educating and enlightening seekers of Truth. For your poignant and insightful works benefiting humanity and for your tireless search for Truth, Justice and Clarity of Thought.

--Denise Lyles-Cook, Director, LABBX Spoken Worlds Pavilion, Hollywood CA

Something Stinks

Somethin' stinks
around the world
somethin' stinks worse than the rotten meat Langston smelled
worse than a dead rat in the attic
worse than decaying bodies on the battlefield
stinks from sea to sea shore to shore
cross borders in all lands
the smell is overwhelming
enough to make one puke
something is very very wrong here
is there a gang of devils cooking Satan soup
smiling and grinning as they stir the giant pot
fumes spreading around the world
we see children running for their lives
woman flee and fathers
going they know not where
but the stench is overwhelming
no one can stand the stinking atmosphere for long
no matter how strong they are no matter how brave
maybe the devil's cooking Satan soup want us all dead
they want all the money
all the land
factories
even the workers they want as slaves
how much can these devils consume
how much land, homes, yachts, cars, diamonds, drugs
do they need
the 1% that they are
is the stench simple greed
niggardliness
surely it is beyond wretchedness
surely it is beyond human
where is the heart of the heartless
is it the meat of the Satan soup boiled hearts
ah, the stench is too much
I cover my face my nose
my eyes hurt
is it some pepper spray unleashed around the world
the devils have agreed pepper spray is good for the people
pepper spray will make them behave
for sure this cannot last
we may need to flee
but we will return to confront the filthy fowl bastards in our midst
with their permanent wars permanent poverty permanent ignorance permanent lies called truth and history.
--Marvin X
7/17/14

The Los Angeles Black Book Expo nominates Marvin X to receive the LABBX Spoken Worlds Pavilion Humanitarian Achievement Award of the Year, for unlimited service to the community of Poetry and Spoken Word, educating and enlightening seekers of Truth. For your poignant and insightful works benefiting humanity and for your tireless search for Truth, Justice and Clarity of Thought.
--Denise Lyles-Cook, Director, LABBX Spoken Worlds Pavilion, Hollywood CA

Marvin X and Nisa Bey agree to finish long delayed book project: Seven Years in the House of Elijah Muhammad

 Marvin X and Nisa Bey, aka Nisayah Yahudah, one of the Bay Area's most controversial women

James Sweeney says, "Marvin X walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as white fish and black as coal." Marvin says the same can be said of Nisa Bey. We are survivors!

It has been seven years since Nisa Bey and Marvin X agreed to do her book project: Seven Years in the House of Elijah Muhammad. They ended the project when they could not come to a contractual agreement. Recently, they discussed the urgent need to finish the project. Marvin X says, "I don't like to  start a project and not finish it." FYI, Nisa Bey, aka Nisa Islam, aka, Nisayah Yahudah, was a national sister captain in the Nation of Islam during the sixties. She was flamboyant and controversial in her role as trainer of women. Trained in the fashion world, Nisa convinced Elijah Muhammad to upgrade the uniforms of the women or M.G.T. She would become one of the wives of Oakland's Dr. Yusef Bey, owner of Your Black Muslim Bakery who made his transition before his legal problems could be adjudicated.

Nisa was privy to a conversation between Oakland Post Editor, Chauncey Bailey and Saleem Bey, 
son-in-law of another Bey wife. Chauncey was assassinated by some of the sons of Dr. Bey (he had 43 children; the Oakland Police role in the murder of Chauncey has been underplayed).

The story of Nisa Bey is not an expose' but a story of a woman's rite of passage. Marvin X has agreed her narrative will be in the spirit of Betty Shabazz who said, "Find the good and praise it." FYI, some years ago, Nisa converted to Judaism. Her present name is Nisayah Yahudah. 



SEVEN YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF ELIJAH
A woman's search for Love and Spirituality

By Nisayah Yahudah: As told to Marvin X

Copyright © 2005 by Nisayah Yahudah and Marvin  X
All Rights Reserved
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: How I Came to Write This Book

*Chapter One: Growing Up in the Big "H"(Houston, Texas)
*Chapter Two: Summer in Galveston
*Chapter Three: Those Terrible Teen Years
*Chapter Four: New York, New York, Searching for God on Broadway
*Chapter Five: Was God  My Black Shining Prince?
*Chapter Six: Miss Hollywood Rocks Mosque #26, San Francisco
*Chapter Seven: Off To Chicago for My "Execution"
*Chapter Eight: Life in the House of Elijah
*Chapter Nine: Table Talks With Elijah
*Chapter Ten: Elijah Cries for Malcolm
*Chapter Eleven: Night Talks With Sister Clara
*Chapter Twelve: Elijah's Last National Sister Captain
*Chapter Thirteen: Return to San Francisco Mosque #26 As Sister Captain: You
Are Properly Relieved of Your Post
*Chapter Fourteen: Ninety Days Out At the Messenger's Table
*Chapter Fifteen: My Prince Comes to Chicago
* Chapter Sixteen: Elijah's Transition: The Second Resurrection
*Chapter Seventeen: The Spiritual Journey Elijah Promised: Sufism, Judaism,
Ahmedism and Other Isms
*Chapter Eighteen : Passing of The Prince  
*Chapter Nineteen: Return to the Compound: Healing and Reconciliation
*Chapter Twenty: Message to Girls and Women
 
 Parable of why I talk with cows by Marvin X

This parable by Marvin X, describes a pause in one of the interview sessions he conducted with Nisa while he lived in the foothills of Northern California for five years, mostly in solitude. He wrote five books during this time. Over several days, he interviewed Nisa for her story.

Parable of Why I Talk With Cows

by

Marvin X

I talk with the cows because they listen, in fact, they stand at attention. Across the road from my writing retreat in the rolling hills of Cherokee, CA, about twenty miles from Chico, a few cows were standing around grazing on the grass as I returned from a short visit to the Feather River, down the road from where I live. I had taken a break from interviewing Sister Nisa Islam for her forthcoming book Seven Years in the House of Elijah, A Woman's Search for Love and Spirituality as told to Marvin X. The interview session was very intense, as if the ghost of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad had entered the room, so we agreed to take a break, get some air. As we returned from Feather River, I stopped my car for a chat with the cows. Nisa will bear witness that at first there were only three or four cows but as I began to talk with them, suddenly the entire herd began to gather for my lecture, and as I said, they all stood at attention as I told them they should go eat their master before he eats them. They seemed to nod in agreement. Nisa was astonished at my conversation and the rapt attention of the entire herd as they listened to my every word. I said goodbye to the cows and entered the gate of my retreat.

Marvin X has been described variously:

The Sledgehammer--Kalamu Ya Salaam

The Human Earthquake--MC Melody

A Tsunami--Suzzette Celeste

Undisputed king of black consciousness--Dr. Nathan Hare

A killer-diller--Nisa Islam

He walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as

white fish and black as coal--James W. Sweeney

Marvin X has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the founders and innovators of the revolutionary school of African writing--Amiri Baraka

When you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or any other rappers out of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin X. He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express black male urban experiences in a lyrical way--James G. Spady

Marvin's refreshing. He's a liberator. He has freed up contemporary black public speech--Rudy Lewis

Marvin X: Parable of the Gaza Concentration Camp

Parable of the Gaza Concentration Camp

The Jews learned nothing from the Nazi genocide, or perhaps they learned everything since 

the Zionist occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is sealed tight, a land of closed borders, 

check points, walls and innumerable spies and snitches.

Gaza is one giant concentration camp of 1.4 million inmates who live stunted lives, even 

denied the right to fish off their coast on the Mediterranean. The democratically elected 

government is denied recognition, though it has as much human right to exist as the 

state of Israel, if not more.

Why should Hamas recognize the Zionist entity, a usurper, land grabber, exterminator, 

mass killer, thugs, pirates on the high seas, state terrorist, in collusion with quisling 

Muslim governments and Christian America, the sycophant of sycophants, who kisses 

Israel's ass at every turn, even her farts America smells.

The Muslim collaborators work in league with the Zionists, especially Egypt who sealed 

her border to starve the concentration camp inmates, partly because Hamas is allied with 

the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most formidable opposition party, and further, because 

Hamas is allied and supported by Shia Iran, the new/old boy on the block of Middle Eastern 

geo-politics.

Iran backs Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as her neighbors in Iraq. 

Praise be to Allah somebody supports the Gaza inmates since they survive by tunneling 

underground to Egypt for basic life support.

The Zionist slaughter of Gazens in the last invasion was a replay of Nazi horrors, 1,500 dead, 

many thousands wounded, homes, mosques, schools, hospitals bombed to eternity. 

Clearly the Zionists learned their behavior from the Nazis. It is well known if they had 

not collaborated with the Nazis, they would not have survived to make the trip from 

Europe to Palestine to displace the Arabs.

The Gaza concentration camp is a reminder Nazism and fascism is alive and well, 

supported by reactionary Muslims and Christian Crusader America. Not only should 

Turkey dispatch ships to break the blockade, but the billion plus Muslim world should 

send ships to Gaza until the inmates are liberated. The irony is that the Muslim 

populations live under regimes no less repressive than the Zionists.

In our romanticism, we wish the Muslim ships would sail from Gaza to America to assist 

the 40 million North American Africans in concentration camps called ghettos and hoods, 

a nation of people still 3/5ths of a man, suffering involuntary servitude (slavery) under the 

constitution. No matter they have a president with the middle name Hussein. He is no 

different than Egypt's Mubarak, for they have the same agenda that supports Zionism 

and oppression within their own populations. Why doesn't President Obama give a general 

amnesty of the two million inmates in the gulags of America, since most of them are petty 

criminals, mostly drug addicts, mentally ill and political prisoners.
--Marvin X
6/4/10