Parable of Don't Help a Nigga

 Parable of Don't Help a Nigga

Can't help a nigga

nigga hate you helping him

in darkest hour

down deep in black hole

throw him rope pull up

back to life

nigga hate ya guts

police kill nigga friend's brother

friend say help me rally community

OK

put 5,000 people in Oakland Auditorium

Invited Farrakhan Angela Davis Eldridge Cleaver

Paul Cobb Dezzie Woods Jones 

Attorney John Burris launched his career with 15 year old Melvin Black murder by OPD, 1979

We demanded police review board

2021 no review board with teeth yet

Miller Lite board

Melvin Black family enjoyed million dollars from death of son by OPD

didn't give me chicken bone

Didn't say thank you Marvin X for doing what we asked you

two media campaigns

first PR demanded five million

NAACP lawyer Nathaniel Colley demanded two million

But he close friend of Mayor Lionel Wilson

First Oakland neo-colonial white mayor in black face

Attorney Colley changed venue to Sacramento

buried case 'til statue of limitations almost ran out

Family said Marvin X help us again

Please do another media campaign

OK

White lawyer saved case, won almost a million

Family said fuck you Marvin X

can you believe family hated me for helping them

at their request

jealous envious ungrateful ignut bastards

I didn't stress

Before they called for my help

I was doing all right

Teaching English at the University of Nevada, Reno

Teaching Creative and Technical Writing at

Nevada Community College

Received two planning grants from the

National Endowment of the Humanities

After helping ungrateful ignut nigga family

Allah blessed me with my own scrilla

Didn't need nothing from ungrateful ignut niggas

Praise be to Allah.

Mama told me begged me

leave them nigga alone

Boy, you don't need them niggas

Them niggas need you

leave 'em 'lone

They just usin' your mind

Boy, when will you use the mind God gave you

and leave them niggas alone?

Mama never did

She loved niggas too

Her real estate business served 99% niggas

Gave them spiritual counseling too

Sometime she had no choice

especially in bitter divorce when husband or wife

refused to sign escrow papers so she could get her commission

and feed her nine children and two grands who thought she they mama

Poor mama RIP, all eleven of us ungrateful bastards too

When mama came up from projects moved to 2 acres in black petit' bourgeoisie neighborhood

doctors lawyers judges next door

my young siblings road Bentley's to parties

Mama spoiled us in the country

She Fowler Ca country girl we didn't understand

Mama picked cotton cut grapes loved land

Couldn't get me out my maple wood studio writing and screwing girlfriends

Mama could hear their love screams in the night from her bedroom window

Marvin, please tell those girls not to scream so loud

And why do you come home from being with them starving to death

Mama we just didn't eat 

too busy making love

Boy will you please got turn on the water to irrigate the grapevines, orange lemon trees please

More water the better oranges will be

Tommy, go get eggs out chicken coup

Tommy say no, ain't walkin' in that chicken shit

Mama, let me go get eggs from Safeway!

Mama tried til she died

she tried I swear mama tried

to give us the game of life but she spoiled us rotten 

like the cotton our children's hands have never touched

central valley cotton more abundant than mississippi cotton

No matter her ungrateful bastard children 

and grandchildren who thought our mama they mama and we they siblings

When mama died the grandchildren told me they hated my mama

the only mama they knew

Can you believe the nerve an ungrateful nigga

How can you hate the only mama you ever knew

mama forced to play mama and daddy

and you hate her

Should bust you in yo mouth

ungrateful bastard bitch

how did the love of God escape your heart

How can you hate the woman who gave you all her love

agape unconditional

are you human or beast

at least my niece slept in mama's bed

she has different energy than my sister's

her sister/nieces 

thank God my niece absorbed my mother's spirituality

On FB recently

she spouted wisdom sounding like my mother

I asked her who she be

channelling my mama tenderly.

Mama love for niggas was agape

She knew they were perfect in God's Love

She never gave up on her children or community

And never will I

I got children strange as can be

Of course I wonder did they get such strangeness from me?

We know the apple don't fall far from the tree!

How can I hate my children and they just like me

How can I hate community

Cause they blind like me

What did God say

Find me the righteous man perfect man

I will save the whole town

Didn't God destroy the town.

Find me the man who won't take a bribe

Find me the man who won't steal

Who won't take another man's wife

Find me the woman who loves a man because he's a man

not because of what he possesses in material things

Well, I'm going to restaurant supply store

buy long handle spoon

deal with niggas from social distance

wear mask too

don't want that nigga virus 

worse than Covid19

Alas, that nigga virus

ain't no vaccine!

--Marvin X

7/23/21

Revised 7/24/21 

Elegy for Terry Collins, Revolutionary

 Black August 2021

ANCESTOR TERRY COLLINS

For more than five decades, Terry was a beacon and mainstay of Bay Area resistance: leader of the SF State Strike (1968-69), Black Panther, Founder and President of KPOO-fm Community Radio, Stalwart defender of political prisoners. 

MARVIN X READING ELEGY FOR TERRY COLLINS

photo Harrison Chastang

Oh, Terry, Revolutionary

Tip of spear

Look of Lion King

Dapper Swagger Classic

Like yr uncle Malcolm X

Yo Mama Ella Collins bad too

Didn’t she run Boston?

Collins family owned land in dirty South

no share-croppers jim crow slaves

black land owners shot back

better ax somebody

Ella Collins bout it bout it

Paid Malcolm’s way to Mecca

You and brother Rodnel

Royal brothers I say

Glad to know you both

Wife Cat Cecelia

daughters too Kiara and Renya

KPOO family royal

We know JJ got the baton

Joe Rudolph taught us all

how to talk on radio

No matter how many takes

One more Joe said

Oh, Terry Revolutionary

You interviewed me so many times

We gotta book in KPOO archives

So many nights so many subjects, local

global events

Africa, Palestine Iran Syria Afghanistan

San Francisco State University Professor Dr. Rabab

I. Abdulhadi gifted the poet with the Palestinian flag

after his reading. Invited him to speak at an upcoming

event on Palestine honoring Terry Collins for his long-time

support of Palestine.

You my draft counselor when I refused to fight in Vietnam

I did exile twice listening to you, fled to Canada, Mexico City, Belize

Terminal Island Federal Prison too

Oh, Terry Revolutionary

Soldier, you relieved of post

Let the new generation soldiers carry your coffin

Let them know weight of revolutionary love action

study your life

revolution beyond color class sex gender

Revolution is seizure of power nada mas

Change is revolution nada mas

Oh, Terry Revolutionary, you made change

Black Studies change

you changed the airways

with black voices, independent liberated

You changed chains off brains

preached til you could say no more

do no more

What shall we do without you

alone exhausted

solitude of our lives

inundated with isolation

terrified in rooms

scared of virus vaccine too

watching elders dancing daily into ancestor land

We must catch and hold high torch of revolution

Oh, Terry Revolutionary, you did 85 years in Babylon

Old Jewish New York Communist Party women told me

Better be a Communist

We Communists live long time

Gus Hall checked out at 90

You did your revolutionary duty

for all to see

freed everybody

wife, children, comrades, community, world

and me!

a friend to the end

true friend

Love you, Terry

heart broken

want to cry

Tears don't come

May come today

I cry for your love

tenacity lessons

for generations to come.

Oh, Terry Revolutionary

remember the Black Arts Movement 50th Celebration

at Laney College

Intergenerational Discussion with your daughter, Phavia's child and my daughter Nefertiti

whose words went viral

"Dad, you say you gonna pass the baton

but you won't pass the baton

we qualified and ready

so pass the baton!"

Oh, daughters Renya and Kiara

Dad passed the baton

Don't you feel it in your hands?

run for your life to finish line of liberation

see him there

If you fall he will catch you

time after time!

We elders will catch you

time after time

feel like you slipping into darkness

give us a call

Oh, Terry Revolutionary, our work is not in vain

Children grandchildren coming strong

Like Garvey said

Look for them in the Whirlwind!

--Marvin X

7/8/21

Revised 7/22/21

DANNY GLOVER AND MARVIN X

KPOO Terry Collins Memorial Celebration Part 1

 A Celebration of Life: The Legacy of Terry Collins

July 24th, 2021

          2:00-6:00pm PST

    Masters of Ceremony: Donald E. Lacy

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

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

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

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

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

1. Rodnell Collins (5-min)

2. Nesbit Crutchfield (5-min)

3. Benny Stewart (5-min)

4. Judy Drummond (3-min)

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

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

1. KPOO (1-2min)

2. Mayor London Breed (1-2min)

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

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

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

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

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

*** KPOO will be live broadcasting

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

• Terry Collins Memorial Celebration KPOO Part 1

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

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

  ---

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

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

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

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

Parable of Tehuti walked among us in the Bay

 Parable of Tehuti

Art by Paradise Jah Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Marvin X

7/17/21

Parable of the Fake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Marvin X

7/16/21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

dancer Raynetta Rayzetta. Opening remarks Suzzette Celeste.