Friday, July 18, 2014
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
Four boys dead from airstrike on Gaza beach
Through Lens, 4 Boys Dead by Gaza Shore
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?
Thursday, July 17, 2014
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
hell on earth
No protest
peace before anything
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
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
--Denise Lyles-Cook, Director, LABBX Spoken Worlds Pavilion, Hollywood CA
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
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 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
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
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.
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,
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,
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
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
--Marvin X
6/4/10
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