Monday, June 28, 2021

Revised: Parable of Should I Go into the Valley of the Loveless

Revised: Parable of Should I go into the valley of the loveless






Why should I go into the valley of the loveless

with everything but love

together decades

overflowing retirements

real estate

loveless

40 years love

talking past each other

no conversation 

pure meeting of minds

dutiful ugliness

sadness silent madness

golden handcuffs tolerate contradictions

She love Jesus

He love Allah

no unity here

dead god vs living god

no good

mansion fine

antique furniture

cruises everywhere

no where else to go

Russia too old

China ok

walk the wall be happy

come home to niggas deaf dumb and blind

can't tell niggas bout world tour

nigga know west deep east oakland 

richmond 

tenderloin sf hunters point

where is Spain Jamaica Grenada Trinidad Brazil Cuba

Nigga know West Oakland back streets

Adline Pine Magnolia Center Peralta

7th and Campbell in the night


love ain't love  at all

mess of pottage

think they being true

both lying

she do and he do

both dodo

where is love constipation

he say you want another nigga

She say no

another entry level nigga like you no

At the club man say to friend

Man, don't you want that woman hittin on you?

hell naw, I got a woman at home I been wit 30 years I don't want

Let that woman hittin on me go somewhere else

terrorize another nigga

I got one terrorizing me.


Married friends so happy got everything

material things ain't love

swimming pool stocks bonds real estate

no matter

he likes casino

gambles all night

$200,000 gone so what

tomorrow another day

stop following me around casino bitch

play yo one-arm bandit

leave me lone

I'm doing ma thang

go your room to sleep

I b there directly

let me gamble all night long

what else a nigga do

kill pain of nigga life

everything and nothin

nigga life ain't shit

no friends

woman hate ya guts

jealous envious

can't wait till ya die

Buddy say when he get in his casket he gonna spit in his wife's face when she come up to view him

He go say bitch

 I hate you I hate you I hate you

nigga love a motherfucker

Nigga love is hate

Violence

Physical verbal emotional violence

Violence is black love

Sick love 

Did we come here to this wicked land for love

Or eternal labor under the sun

How could we love past New Year’s 

Auction block day how

Massa sold ma woman/his woman down river

Sold ma/his children down river

Never see again love



Yeah, now we got everything

and nothing

Ain’t got black minds of African myths rituals

Ain’t got liberation minds

We kill every weekend city to city

Not one white man killed touched

Sick love/hate self and kind

Niggas scared of revolution Last Poets said, still scared

2021 run when popo comes

Thought this was yo turf gangsta

Why you run when popo come

Popo bitch slap yo ass

You cry like the little bitch you are

Pants off yo ass bitch

Scared of revolution

Who is the original man

Who is the white man

Who is the white woman

Why don’t the white man want you to have social equality

with him

Dr. Fauci is Dr. Yakub fool

Covid19 ain’t the virus

You the virus and the vaccine

Problem and solution

Black man and woman in america

Problem and solution of the world

Free the black man and woman

Palestine free

Iraq free

Afghanistan

Yemen

Ethiopia

Nigeria

Congo

You the key nigga negus

But you the lock won’t use the key to say the world

How you save world pants off yo ass

How you save world 

kill yo brother over dope and girl


Kill brother kill self

After all this time you don’t know yo enemy

Woman ain’t enemy

She give you babies

Wash yo drawers

Cook yo food

Suck ya fuck ya

Got ya back and front

You swear she yo enemy

Nigga you don’t even know the enemy

Don’t even know yourself

Man in the mirror Michael said

Remember the Time Michael said

Who the original man

Who the mother of civilization

Black woman want you to stand tall

Liberation or death

“Oppression worse than slaughter”--Al Qur’an


Fanon said liberation is sanity for oppressed

Man woman

You weak bitch ass nigga brain dead motherfucker

God send angel to yo motherfuckin house

You don’t have clue deaf dumb blind

You tired of God in yo house  talkin black shit

You can't take it

Took forty years of the white man’s slave job

Can’t take minute of truth

Run yo bitch ass to bedroom slam door shut

watch football baseball basketball niggaball

Anything but that black truth ball upside yo ignut brick head 

You can't take it bitch

Crying 

stop trying to turn me and my wife out with that black panther shit

I can’t take it

Just wanna relax drink my jugs of Vodka

Breakfast lunch dinner

Let me gamble and lose $200,000 

so what I slaved forty years

It’s my money

Do what the fuck I want

Ain’t leaving no legacy to these ungrateful bastards

Little somethin’ somethin’ fa ma son

Don’t know what he go be

Pants off his ass

Need manhood training

Hell, I ain’t had none

So I’m fuckin’ off da rest

Wife got hers

She been wit me when I ain’t been wit maself




But fuck that black shit

I can’t take it

Give me headache

let me go groom my garden

I’m at peace

Trim plants clean weeds

Water plants thirsty

This my peace

Joy

I know I ain’t nothing

Wife call me entry level nigga

But I took care of my mom and dad

Put ‘em in one of my houses no rent

Still don’t think they loved me

Never said they did

Never hugged me no matter what I did


Girlfriend told me when her mother died

Daddy came into her bedroom drunk

Wanted to make love

But he’d never hugged her

She said if he’d hugged her

She might have made love to him. Wtf



Part II


Sent poem to my Lover husbands and wives 

did not appreciate my poem

don't write about them again they said

Didn’t use their names but they know I was talking about them

they missed my poetic cry for love

Is this why Elijah told me not to write poetry

“Poetry is a science my people don’t understand.

I am only after the plainest way to get the truth to my people.”

Elijah was probably right. As per English we suffer

The psycho-linguistic crisis

Nigga I live you

Why I gotta be a nigga

Bitch I love you

Why I gotta be a bitch

African I love you

Why I gotta be African


Oh, lovers

Young old

Let me see

hugs kisses

talk is good

First be friends not lovers


My married friends only have each other

They love when I visit bring joy laughter

Barakas said the same

They laughed when I came

Then drifted into madness 

Ancient age old buried shit

Resolved then unresolved when Jack Daniels starts talking

Rum Hennessy Miller Lite late into the night

All my friends suffer pain of nigga life

Amiri Baraka said “Negrocities”

Told me not to steal his term

So I defined it: Negrocities, 

Inflammation of the negroid gland at base of brain

Caused by bad habits


even black petti' bourgeoisie life sad

Frazier's world of make believe

Conspicuous consumption of things things things

Still she is not happy

Watching man self-destruct

Drifting an’ driftin’ (Charles Brown)

steel sharpens steel

2 become 1

1 plus 1 =1 in the name of love math






Mama told son she made dad go to church to

Control him 

and it worked 

marriage lasted 

Tough love?


Stallion donkey don't mix

donkey can't win derby

Donkey love disappears

blistering sumner heat

Too hot for love


In summers of my youth

Hot valley girls

mumu dresses

Loose fitting accessible to da hot valley girl funk

Too hot for panties

Hot dripping love

115 degrees midnight love

Roadside cotton patch love

Walnut Ave

Fig Ave

Church

Roading Park car fog love

Police flashlight on nigga ass love

Drive-in theater love

How many Drive-in theater babies?

Grapevine love babies

Cut raisins in the land of Sun Maid 

Born in the land Sun Maid

Fowler CA

Mama too 

model black businesswoman mama

real estate broker spiritualist of Mary Baker Eddy

no medicine in our medicine cabinet nothing

no the truth

truth will free you from all disease

disease is negative attraction

God is Perfect without sin and disease, Mama said

Mary Baker Eddy said


"What happens to a raisin in the sun?"

grapes dry in sun

cut grapes lay on paper tray in the sun

7 cents tray

100 trays day 

for school clothes

else go school naked

Girls cut grapes too

Hot grapevine love in the vines

Mexican shout vamanos

Day is done

Vamanos


back in da hood

Come here gul friend in yo mumu

Stop car across from Hunt's grocery 

cotton field love

Rainer Ale green death love

Gul gimme some sweet hot pussy gul

Rainer Ale make her pee side cotton patch

pee gul hurry up gimme dat sweet hot funky love

Let's go Roading park

Steam up car windows hot summer love


Black love lives

Black love matters

God is Love

4th quarter love dead

Lovers tired too ignut to love

old sick crazy love


My friends, 

You think I come in hate

I hate the love I don't see

love is my mission

I speak in the name of love

You say you love

You stay for love

let love live

don't hide love

Let people see love

Let people see the love of God in your eyes

time is precious

yesterday is gone 

today almost done

what will tomorrow bring

Better ax somebody.



Bakersfield pitching watermelon love

No watermelon pitching after noon

Bakersfield sun blazing

Sun burn nigga ass

Vamanos Vamanos


Love is mean these days

Covid19 love

mask love

stay in house love

I don't know you wife

I don't know you husband

"We had a chance to know each other

before we made love

before I gave you some pussy

before you gave me some dick....."


Lovers dld sick tired exhausted 

with neveknowness

Childhood issues unresolved

love impossible

no rite of passage back from insanity

social angst shattered cultural strivings (Dr. Nathan Hare)

Some lovers drown in drink drugs

some stuck on esoteric mythic tales of supreme wisdom

First Resurrection narratives of God Allah

They got supreme wisdom

but didn't get it

no Nation of Islam no land no sovereignty just talk

Jews got Israel 

nigga Muslims talk

Where is the land of Shabazz five states and mules

no wonder imams wife goes to church in fine hat Gucci bag

Sycophant of preacher

Imam husband home in bed

mad cause Mother Ship ain't come

but he see it every morning in the sky

See that morning star moving that's her I swear

wife don't believe imam husband

Believe preacher 

What husband know

Preacher knows all 

he know Allah God too

Mason

"Will you hide truth while you know?"--Al Qur'an

Preacher won't tell me 

give him 10% Sundays

tell me Jesus is God

God need money

God need my W-9

I take God's money from my husband's stash

his money my money

my money my money

my money preacher money  

My imam husband old sick silly

Full of anger 

at me

world 

white devils

black devils

Saudi Arabian devils

Supper Sunni devils

Mexican driver devils 

road rage everyday

he don't understand Valley is. Mexico

Negro days are over

White man days are done

Todo es La Raza La Raza 

Nada para los negros

lo siento mucho


I can't take his black rage everyday every hour

I can't take it

it's too much

estranged from his children grandchildren

they never call visit

when they do he says fuck you

ungrateful bastards fuck you

don't wish me hapi b day and I never see you

you never bring my grandchildren to hug kiss fuck you


my anxiety attacks confound him

nothing wrong with me he say doctors say too

I know my blues 

fuck him and the doctors

fuck the ambulance too paramedics too

he ain't touched  me in years

Kissed me

doesn't know sweet smell of my pussy

don't want to know

my mouth turns him off

his dick silly putty

he say it might get hard

If I just shut up

stop saying no at every turn

he might kiss all of me if I shut the fuck up sing Silent Night

I can't shut up

To save my life my love I can't.

Why do I dwell in no zone

first thing out my mouth is no

our love is war eternal


He needs me

I need him

We have everything except two souls united.

why fight when battle won day we  met

our love was sealed

Still we fight

Mr. and Mrs. Jackson hollywood style

In fourth quarter of lives

old fools in paradise

Do we need a break?

a minute or two break  for RR

come up for air

Before we kill each other in these hot summer nights

He had a gun sold it

he pulled it on me

I pulled it on him

(thankfully, he'd taken out the bullets)

He sold it

Thank you Jesus/Allah


Did Slavery do this 

white supremacy type II (Dr. Nathan Hare)

unresolved grief trauma

Too much toxicity systemic white supremacy Type II


I love him so

He's told me go

Million times

Told him go

We stay

Problem stays

No solution but the grave

We love the perks

golden handcuffs

Prisoners of love

together but Distant Lovers (Marvin Gaye)

our love a distant cry

Let us hear the Adhan  

let it crawl into our hearts 

healing healing 

Let the Muezin cry for peace and love at summer dawn 

--Marvin X

6/29/21


About the Poet


Some call him the USA's Rumi, Saadi, Hafiz (Bob Holman);

some call him Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland

(Ishmael Reed); some call him Socrates teaching in the

hood, a combination Thelonious Monk and Marianne

Williamson (Dr. Cornel West); his love poems will resound

as long and as deeply as any love poems ever

written by anyone, e.g., Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett

Browning, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou or any others.

(Fahizah Alim); he is Father of the genre known as

Muslim American literature (Dr. Mohja Khaf);

Marvin X is one of the innovators and founders of the

revolutionary school of African writing (Amiri Baraka, RIP);

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, RIP).



Marvin X reading at the University of Chicago, Sun Ra Conference on Afrofuturism, 2015

photo Burrell Sunrise


For readings/speaking engagements 

send letter of invitation to 

jmarvinx@yahoo.com


Tentative engagements 2021


Oakland BAMFEST, Black August 2021


Duke University, North Carolina

Conversation with Dr. Cornel West and Marvin X

Palestine and Black America, TBA


Opens for Donald Lacy's Color Struck, New York City, TBA


Poets Marvin X and Dr. Neal Hall in Concert

Philadelphia TBA


for more information

stay turned

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

510-575-7148

Breaking News

Poet, Planner, Organizer Marvin X, M.A.

has been awarded a $100,000 grant to organize the Black Street

Vendors of Oakland. If you are a vendor, get in touch with him or

James Copes, Director of the Black vendors at Lake Merritt.











Thursday, June 24, 2021

Duke University invites Dr. Cornel West and Marvin X for a conversation on Palestine and Black America

 Breaking News

 On the Life and Times of 

Marvin X

  indefatigable and peripatetic poet/planner/organizer/philosopher

"Marvin X is Socrates teaching in the African hood."--Dr. Cornel West

"He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. Don't spend all that money going to seminars and workshops on motivation and inspiration, just go stand at 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, and watch Marvin X at work!"

--Ishmael Reed, MacArthur Genius Awardee

"He's the USA's Rumi, Hafiz, Saadi!"

--Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club

"His poetry is orgasmic!"

--Fahizah Alim, Editor Emeritus, Sacramento Bee

"His reading put me in a swoon!"

--devorah major, Emeritus Poet Laureate of San Francisco























Marvin X and Dr Cornel West have been invited to hold a conversation at Duke University on Palestine and Black America. Stay tuned for more information.

photo Adam Turner


Marvin X in Seattle WA at Gaza protest

The indefatigable and peripatetic poet/planner just received a $100,000 grant to organize a Black Vendors Association in Oakland. The project will be directed by James Copes, organizer of the Lake Merritt vendors. "With the limited funds of this grant, I will support James Copes organize Black vendors. I was impressed when the 30,000 mostly Latinx street vendors in Los Angeles got organized to advocate Gov. Jerry Brown to approve SB946 that allows street vending throughout California without police harassment, seizure of goods, excessive fines or requests for immigration papers. The mission of my proposal includes educating Black vendors to advocate for policy changes as per our cultural prerogatives and economic equity. For years whites and other ethnic groups have been vending on the streets of San Francisco and Berkeley, but Blacks in Oakland were denied vending rights. In San Francisco, I organized the first Black vendors on the streets legally with my non-profit papers. Soon I had over fifty white vendors paying to work under my non-profit papers, including white vendors in the lucrative Union Square shopping district. The San Francisco police turned beet red when the white vendors showed them they were working under a Black organization's papers.

You may think I'm guilty of hyperbole but the San Francisco said I had too much power for a nigger in downtown San Francisco. Between the SFPD and the Franchise Tax Board, I was harassed daily under the color of law. Lawrence Wilson, Chief Attorney for the SFPD told me and Sister Hurriyah Asar, founder of the non-profit organization I incorporated, "If you beat us in court, I'll go to the Board of Supervisors and change the rules." And he did, as whites always do when you master their game. In the hood we call it dirty pool! But, as you know, whites don't believe what goes around comes around, that's why they are so averse to Critical Race Theory. They don't like to be called devils, and especially don't want their children to be called such. Alas, how many centuries were we described as savages, primitives, monkeys, subhuman, beasts, by, yes, their scientists, yes, we were scientifically classified as a lower form of human life, but human enough to be experimented upon to establish the science of gynecology. Then came Eugenics, before and after Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood to murder black babies, and, Hitler learned from Margaret how to exterminate the Jews (Ah, irony of ironies, the Jews learned how to exterminate Palestinians, how to ethnically cleanse the occupied lands of Palestine, with the poppycock of Biblical scriptures to legitimize their Zionist mythology, although Jesus dismissed the Jews in John 8:44.

The parents of Bill Gates were Eugenicists , then Bill Gates and Belinda followed the family tradition, funding virus research in America that was clearly population control.

Bill funded germ warfare research in America, then exported it to Hunan, China, naturally in league with the Chinese Communist Party and military, and the plethora of American corporations who are in league with the Chinese for exporting cheap goods from slave labor, including Muslim Chinese slaves in concentration camps, but such goods are a boon to the globalist economy. Even black athletes and rappers defend the exploitation of cheap Chinese and Asian labor (North Korea) and elsewhere. If China is America's avowed enemy, why is she importing 80% of her medicine from China? Would you purchase medicine from you enemy? Well, Blacks in America go to white supremacist hospitals and doctors, then wonder why we are chopped up and die from merely having a common cold that was misdiagnosed on purpose. For that matter, we send our children to be educated in white supremacist schools, colleges and universities, then, as Ancestor Amiri Baraka exclaimed, "We wonder why our children come home from colleges and universities hating everything we're about, except they don't have a clue what we're about!"



Marvin at his Academy of Da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland
photo Adam Turner

Visions Magazine, a publication of the Berkeley Juneteenth Foundation, will feature an essay by the poet on Berkeley High Schools and How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy Types I and II, co-author is Abdul El, a Berkeley High School math teacher.


Berkeley Technology Academy students visit the poet's exhibit of his Black Arts Movement archives.
The Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley, acquired the bulk of his archives, 2006.

Oakland's BAMFEST 21

For BAMFEST 21 the poet's Black Bird Press News and Review Magazine, online and print versions, will feature Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, recently appointed Oakland's Poet Laureate. She is the founder of the Lower Bottom Playaz theatre company, founder of The Black Arts Movement Business District CDC and producer of BAMFEST, a celebration of the cultural district established by the Oakland City Council, January 19, 2016.




Ayo is Marvin X's star student after taking his theatre class at Laney College, 1981. She has performed and directed his plays, including In the Name of Love, One Day in the Life and Flowers for the Trashman.


Marvin X and Ayodele at the Flight Deck Theatre, 1540 Broadway, Oakland, where Ayo's Lower Bottom Playaz are in residence. Ayo's Lower Bottom Playaz theatre company is the only theatre group in the world to perform the complete 20th Century Cycle plays by August Wilson in chronological order!

For information about
BAMFEST 21
Black August 21
stay turned
Black Bird Press News and Review Magazine will publish the official program of
BAMFEST Black August 2021
virtual and live performances
throughout the month of August
classic plays from the Black Arts Movement
And the Neo-Black Arts Movement
poetry readings
by the Bay Area's best
Tongo
Ayodele Nzinga
Phavia Kujuchagulia
Aries Jordan
Marvin X
and many others



Bio of Master Teacher Marvin X

Marvin is a Co-founder of Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District. He is also Co-founder of the National Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, the most radical artistic and literary movement in American history. "The grouping of Playwright Ed Bullins, Journal of Black Poetry Editor, Dingane Joe Goncalves, Poet Amiri Baraka, aka, LeRoi Jones, Poet Sonia Sanchez, Poet Askia M. Touré, and Poet/playwright Marvin X became a major nucleus of Black Arts Movement leadership."--Kalaamu ya Salaam, Dirty South Black Arts Movement, author The Majic of JuJu

Master BAM Critic James G. Spady on Marvin X

"...Marvin X is credited with convincing Eldridge Cleaver to use his advance against royalties from the popular book Soul on Ice, to help set up Black House in San Francisco, 1967. The building became 'the mecca of political, cultural activity in The Bay Area.' Among artists featured were: Sonia Sanchez, Vonetta McGee, Amiri and Amina Baraka, Chicago Art Ensemble, Avoctja, Emory Douglas, Sarah Webster Fabio, et al. Playwright Ed Bullins joined Marvin and Eldrdige at the Black House, along with Marvin's partner, Ethna X (Hurriyah Asar), and singer Willie Dale, Cleaver's buddy from San Quentin, along with Willie's wife Vernasteen."

Marvin X says, "Although Cleaver was about to marry his lawyer, Beverly Axelrod, who smuggled his manuscript out of Soledad Prison, we at the Black House felt it was a contradiction for the Chairman of Black House to sleep at the white house, so we forcibly moved him from his white lover's house. Alonzo Batin Harris, Guru of Black Arts West Theatre, who arranged Muhammad Speaks Newspaper to announce Black Arts West Theatre in San Francisco, and it was Alonzo Batin who recruited most of Black Arts West Theatre members into the Nation of Islam, including Duncan Barber, Hillary Broudus, Ethna Wyatt and Marvin Jackmon, aka, Marvin X, after 1967.  So only Alonzo Batin who'd done prison time with Eldridge and myself had the power to physically remove Eldridge from Axelrod's white house. Among the items we removed were the wicker chair, spear, shield and rug from EC's room that soon appeared in the classic photo of Huey P. Newton.


"Marvin X was my teacher. Many of our comrades came through his Black Arts Theatre, e.g., Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Emory Douglas, Samuel Napier, George Murray, JoAnn Mitchell, Ellendar Barnes, et al."--Quote from One Day in the Life, Marvin X's docudrama of addiction and recovery. "Huey, we love you and honor you for teaching us to transcend fear, the first level in revolutionary consciousness!"--Marvin X


Cont., Critic James G. Spady

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, Philadelphia New Observer Newspaper

Comment by Marvin X

"The Black Arts Movement poetry, plays and art, liberated the consciousness of North American Africans. After attending our readings and dramas, Black masses were truly liberated to discover they could say socalled profane and obscene words such as bitch, ho and motherfucker. The UC Berkeley free speech revolution of Mario Savio did not touch the hood. At Black Arts West Theatre in San Francisco, the SFPD threatened to close down our theatre because of the raw language in the plays of Ed Bullins, Amiri Baraka and Marvin X. When we came to perform at Oakland's Laney College, the Oakland Police threatened my cast with arrest if we performed my play Flowers for the Trashman. Yet, Bobby Seale testifies when the Soul Student Advisory Council at Merritt College on Grove Street, now MLK, Jr. Drive, the play caused a linguistic revolution that advanced black student consciousness that morphed into organizing the Black Panther Party. Again, it was a linguistic revolution, a revolution in language since Black people had been held in a linguistic prison of bourgeoisie culture. The language in the BAM plays truly liberated the psycholinguistics of North American Africans. The very idea that we were free on our own accord to say and utter any word was a liberating advance in achieving the mental equilibrium of our psyche.


The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience

During BAMFEST, Black August, 2021, Marvin X will screen segments of his Black Arts Movement documentary The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience, produced and directed by Marvin X, Edited by Ken Johnson. FYI, the title comes from the description of a writing student who endured the poet for over five years. She described the mentorship of Marvin X as "The wild crazy ride of the Marvin X Experience." Her mentor says, "Thank you Aries Jordan, but most of all, you learned something which was your mission. Alas, did you learn as much at Mills College where you obtained your MFA? FYI, I taught at Mills in the Upward Bound Program. When the US Government who funds Upward Bound demanded the director, Connie Wye, close down my student production based on my book Woman-Man's Best Friend, Connie refused because she saw the students were inspired and motivated by my script. The USA pressured Connie until she suffered an aneurysm and died in the hospital. We wonder did Aries get a similar wild crazy ride at Mills? As you know, Mills is scheduled to close, although we hear Northeastern University has agreed to partner with Mills to keep it afloat.

The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience

A poet's history of the Black Arts Movement

Written, Directed and Performed by Marvin X

Edited by Ken Johnson

The following appear in this national history of the Black Arts Movement

Especially the role of Bay Area Artists associated with the productions of Marvin X

Coast to Coast

Artists include the following

Amiri Baraka, Amina Baraka, Askia Toure, Dr. Cornel West, Tarika Lewis, Destiny Muhammad, Suzzette Celeste, Raynetta Rayzetta, Geoffery Grier, Salat Townsend, James W. Sweeney, Phavia Kujichagulia, Nefertiti Jackmon, Naji, Tacuma King, Kele Nitoto, Fillmore Slim, Ayodele Nzinga, Cat Brooks, James Rhodes, Dr. Nathan Hare, Dr. Julia Hare, Ishmael Reed, Rev. Andriette Earl, Rev. Cecil Williams, Elliott Bey, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Elombe Brath, Sam Anderson, Sonia Sanchez, Omowale Clay, Muhammida El Muhajir, et al.

Marvin X returned to his former classroom at Laney College, The Odell Johnson Theatre. He opened for Donald Lacy's play Color Struck

photo Alicia Mayo


Left to Right: Marvin X, Black Panther Party Minister of Culture Emory Douglas,

Comic/playwright Donald Lacy, Attorney John Burris


Breaking News




Catch Donald Lacy interview with Marvin X on KPOO Radio, San Francisco,

Tuesday, June 29, 2021,

5PM

KPOO, San Francisco's Independent Black Radio Station

The House Joe Rudolph built

"Joe Rudolph taught me how to talk on the radio. He made me do 100 takes until I got it right to his satisfaction. Thank you, Joe, I know you are in revolutionary black radio history. I must recall for readers our last conversation at Oakland's Mosswood Park. Joe leaned against a tree and called me over, then whispered in my ear, 'Marvin, ain't gonna be no more like us is it? I whispered back, 'No, Joe, ain't gonna be no more like us. We the last of a generation of revolutionaries. All praise is due Joe Rudolph and all the brothers and sisters who've kept KPOO alive. Terry Collins, JJ, Donald Lacy, Avotchja, et al."





Ayo is Marvin X's star student after taking his theatre class at Laney College, 1981. She has performed and directed his plays, including In the Name of Love, One Day in the Life and Flowers for the Trashman.


Marvin X and Ayodele at the Flight Deck Theatre, 1540 Broadway, Oakland, where Ayo's Lower Bottom Playaz are in residence.

More information about
BAMFEST 21
coming soon
stay turned
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
for interviews and speaking/reading engagements
send letter of invitation to
jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Contracts for speaking/reading engagements must include freedom of speech clause, otherwise don't contact me.

"The Black Arts Movement was/is about Freedom of Speech. Amiri Baraka said, 'If you mean get off the sidewalk, say get off the sidewalk!' No matter what the BAM revisionists proclaim, the BAM was about the low down dirty truth (Sun Ra). We freed our people from the linguistic puritanism of the Miller Lite speech of the Black bourgeoisie (Dr. E. Franklin Frazier) and Black Anglo Saxons (Dr. Nathan Hare).
Bitch, Nigga and Motherfucker liberated the Black liberation audiences. Then came the rappers making billions from the same three words: bitch, nigga and motherfucker. Hollywood made billions too with Hip Hop black films. Now niggas scared to say nigga, they say The N word. WTF, say what you mean and mean what you say. The worse nigga is the nigga in denial that he's a nigga, but if a taxi in downtown NYC won't take his ass to Harlem at 3AM, suddenly he realizes he's in fact a nigga and wants to sue. Nigga please! But if you think all I know is bitch, nigga and motherfucker, read my thirty books and get back to me! Negus!


A few books by Marvin X. One of the most prolific writers in the world, the Last Poets say, "Marvin X writes a book a month. After a reading and conversation with Amiri Baraka at the Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Marvin arrived in Houston, TX, at the home of his oldest daughter Nefertiti. After a dinner conversation about Eldridge Cleaver, Marvin wrote his memoir of Eldridge, My Friend the Devil, posting a chapter daily on the internet, Chickenbones.com. The rough draft is still there, written in about 30 days.

--Marvin X
6/24/21


Poet Marvin X reading at the University of Chicago Sun Ra Conference on Afrofuturism, 2015, produced by David Boykin.
photo Burrell Sunrise