Excerpts from the Arriving In The Future Poetry Edition
A few of the primary themes addressed: Negotiating Identity, Body Politics, Nationality, Movement & Migration, Dreams & Reflections Upon Africa, Colonization, Home & Belonging.
RonAmber Deloney
Arriving In The Future
I was arriving in the future
Love in my back pocket and the sun in my dreadlocks
Passport cocked between my two fingers
Tears behind my eyeballs because the struggle in my living room still lingers with me
I stepped into the city. After myself.
The world is singing to me because I am all that’s left over from my grandmother’s shoulder to my mama.
Tears played across my living room
I am that melodrama
And the heir to all of the karma that found me with generations of excuses wrapped around me.
I stepped soundly into the growth trying to drown me in the fact
That I have the act to do things profoundly
If I can humble my soul to mumble my ancestors around me and hold tight
To the God that loves loudly in bright yellow my rainbow
I was arriving in the future.
Round edge up and head up like Medusa
Last time I had lines about the dopeness that useta
Inhabit the dopest who choose to
Chill in cuts with no cups to run over
My flow still refuse to abuse the muse
These days I choose self love over the gangsta’s bruise that wants to shoot me with a 12-gauge shotty then lick bodies like lollipops
The beat down never stops
So I keep going
I got my voodoo showing
Open chest, lest I get laid to rest with my best foot fucking around somewhere
Out of town somewhere
The universe will clown me
If I hit the dust with no gifts around me
I want the gold buried with me inscribed to say: the deeds I done were astounding
and when the genies come I want them to surround me
chant me loudly into the brown of the sound
Profoundly.
I was arriving in the future.
back pack in tact
laughing at the smack that obstacles talk to my back as I walk past
Greater than good with this
cause I blast real fast
GANGSTA
self-professed the best to do it over and over again
all the time/ I ain’t lying/ I can rhyme
but I don’t trip cause the lines write themselves
I just sit still and get free
flow with the flow that flows within me
flow with the flow that flows within me
flow with the flow that flows within me
unabashedly worth every penny you’d think to spend
on this trend settling in to your skin
give in
to the lion prancing through your Zen
calling you to bend your back and
re-attach
Bob your head to the back and SCREAM
up out of your dream
I was arriving in the future.
Joe Dramiga
From the battlefield of intellectual warfare
Please everybody listen up go beyond hearing and decipher through diction encrypted description of a racist mind
Don’t be blind and watch this caged thought I break it open through verbalization
YES I AM part of this nation
Devastation of the powers that be I’m a menace to society
As I walk through life’s stages I pour my heart and soul onto pages
Seems like these words are cursed everything is reversed I try to reach out but the world just f*cking hates me
They always slate me, debate me, and lately It seems impossible It aggravates me
Will anybody take me slightly serious?
I’m getting furious Dies ist meine letzte Warnung Zeig die Zähne und mein Lächeln ist nur Tarnung
A black child in depression most come to me for answers forgetting the question .
Thus my efforts are fruitless .
Explanations useless
Black and German?
A revelation I wonder ’bout this stupid nation’
Akosua Elisha
Outstanding
because i am outstanding i stand out,
outside of the circles that were drawn around me outside of the circle that was drawn
around my face my body the circle that was there long before me … and shall stay till the
last day
and i shall never fit in because i am outstanding
yet waiting for the overstanding that makes me understand why there is a need to be
inside why there is a need for a circle my mind is too wide
maybe that’s why I stand out my thoughts are too tightly coiled not following streams but
creating its own river that will flow powerfully through mountains even without any follower
in silence almost invisible only for the ones who use their eyes as an extension of their
brain that is romantically involved with consciousness and naturally sane
i stand out because i am outstanding
i was told i was lesser that my heritage determined my incapability of standing inside the
circle
that my mentality was of a strange kind? “mentally weak” unspoken but by others
critically defined… used to think if they only knew me better, but now I know they did with
fear of me being introduced to myself.. and that’s why I had to be kept outside circles … lies
and tricks were put on my spirit heavy like bricks locking me into a cage of limited defining
options that appeared in as blend of darwin and flavor of love …
but by the quick tick and the hunted tock my brain outgrew the make believe and
rearrange the cage as a camp to learn why they need to define me once I realized the
cage is an alien square shaped circle I could simply break my spell to get closer to what
ever is called free
gladly predisposed too much for a circle
they cannot grasp my capable capacity and my eternal divinity of my mentally awakened
spirituality
my mind can never again fit in their mouth
my mentality is so high they cannot pull it down
I am outstanding so I only can stand Out
Chantal-Fleur Sandjon
An Image in the Third Person
The image of one’s body is solely negating. It’s an image in the third person. All around the body reigns an atmosphere of certain uncertainty.
Frantz Fanon
Brazil Cuba & Martinique
when the question of origin
hits her hard
she bandages the wounds with
fictional ancestry
Her application for identity asylum
is still pending
fiction much more worth
than facts & fatherhood
in the gray zone of brown skin
Black by choice
or popular demand?
I say
the whole world is turning
into a benetton advert
[I picked that up at starbucks
last week]
She says
the skinhead did not ask
about her German mother
before spitting on her
And then
my smile
meets the silence
of her screams
I try so hard to understand her
She has stopped
holding my hand in public
Only nights turn her grays golden
through the touch of a stick girl
with noisy bangles
The dark is her canvas
she creates a world
in which butterflies eat skyscrapers
& burp sunshine in shiny bubbles
they burst at the sound of her alarm
& fade into the morning blue/s
Ahead of her:
you aren’t that black/ but
where do you really come from/ can
I touch your hair/ is
that your real name/ you
look so exotic
At the end of the day
she will be cut fucked silenced & excluded
by Goodwill & Curiosity
One night
she showed me her wounds
darkness was comforting the maggots
I gave her aspirin and turned on the TV
I think that
she is overreacting
I have to listen to fat jokes
all
the
time
Chirikure Chirikure
Seasons
As he intuitively goes about his daily routine
Securing food and shelter for the family
Sekuru Devera does not necessarily know
That the sparrows that always disappear
As the cold days of winter slowly approach
Fly all the way to the summer of the north
What he knows with absolute certainty
Is that these little birds of the high skies
Will come back at the very start of summer
Returning even in much bigger numbers
To ravage crops that he will have tendered
Spawning hunger, if he doesn’t plan well
Bound together
If you keep going on like that
Referring to my birth place
Simply as Africa, Africa, Africa
I will soon take it upon myself
To refer to your birth place
Simply as Europe, Europe, Europe
After all, you have a common identity
Bound by a negotiated union of nations
Sharing same bank notes and uneven plans
While there, where my umbilical chord lies
Blood remains much stronger than currencies
Flowing through totems, the veins that bind us
Olumide Popoola
traveling
I’ve been traveling
bags on my shoulders
picking up pieces of rotten cotton
on the shores of Gorée
drunk spilled oil at the edges
of the Niger Delta
bathed myself in the spray
of Victory Falls
I have been traveling
from south to west, up and down
cascading from centre to periphery
opened and closed chapters of misery and joy
I’ve searched the insides of calabashes
for a vessel to retain hopes and dreams
pounded yam with my own hands
so that the blisters could connect me
to the soul of the land
I’ve looked and not been seen
I’ve seen and been overlooked
I’ve been on the road so long
my shoes became the wheel
when you could get
what you did not need
need not what you got
and required something
that wasn’t available here
got not what you hoped for there
not what would/should be yours
rightfully and without baggage
and the need, the need got frail
it got frail, frail so
been traveling with bags
making up home
journeyed south and west
in and out, cascading
arrived without rest
so the need exhausted
itself
fragile
exile
need no more
home
at last
Asoka Esuruoso
Burnt By The Sun
I have noticed something recently, something strange.
It took months for this realization to finally burst upon my consciousness .
but now that it’s here I cannot escape it.
As I walk through the U-bahn stations,
as I sit on the train going in any direction,
every once in a while I will see an Afro German,
or African Family.
my eyes immediately latch upon them,
especially if they have young children,
especially if they have little girls who look like myself when I was young.
Anything the little girls do seems noteworthy, almost amazing.
Something about their very presence is noteworthy, almost out of place.
In the Brooklyn Subway where 70 percent of your fellow passengers are black,
the sight of a black child would be nothing extraordinary ,
in fact quite dull and ordinary.
But here their bodies seem to stick out like dark wood against a white sea.
And I am caught by the thought of how dark they are, how dark and yet beautiful.
Then I catch sight of my own face in the train window
and realize in one shocking moment that I am several shades darker than the girls I am gazing at.
I look for a moment black, like a negative of black space.
I can never remember being this dark, this black.
Has the sun has burnt me this way?
Has the German sun somehow burnt me darker than the American one?
I ask,
Have I,
Have I,
Have I been burnt by the Sun?
But then it occurs to me that wherever I am, even here half way across the world, I am still standing under the same sun.
Something else must be different.
My vision has become affected.
It and it alone has changed. For that moment, that small space of time I saw the world through the white German gaze, and from the outskirts of this human sea of whiteness looked upon my own body as black, as a black splotch, a dark raisin within the sun.
Abandoned to the Music
Stepping off of a train,
I stand on the platform
And witness a little girl hurling herself across the U-bahn platform –
abandoned to the rhythm, the music, the motion, like a wild thing.
Energy in motion.
Frantic, frantic, frantic release.
Frantic, frantic, frantic, release.
For one so young, for one so small.
Dark body like a snake that’s forgotten itself, stomping the ground with feet, feet, feet. While her parents drum, and her sisters watch on, before an empty change bucket.The audience stands, silent and still, envy in our motionless feet.
Head thrown, eyes closed, rarely have I seen someone so abandoned.
But abandoned to what?
She can’t help herself. Her little chest swells, heaves, swings.
Her eyes open, and she remembers we’re there, remembers the audience –
shy smile,
desperate need for acceptance.
She looses step, almost falls.
But catches, finds herself, catches the beat.
Stepped up again.
Stepping, stepping, stepping again.
Lord, this child can dance.
And a spark blazes in my chest at the sight,
words runs through me,
the words to a poem that has been ringing in my thoughts for days.
I think of New York,
the glittering city as I first saw it glowing above the Hudson River’s dark waters.
I think of Berlin
That city, this city of dreams
where every opportunity feels like a new chance at life.
I dream of buried beaches,
hidden hopes so strong,
so forceful it feels as if they are on the brink of being born,
because there are no boundaries,
the boundaries are the limits of our imagination.
For a brief moment,
for a moment I am free.
Darius James
“Un Aperitivo Col Diavolo”
The air was heavy with the cloying aroma of glazed nuts simmering in an artificial syrup. Ku’dam glowed in a frost of lights. And shoppers trundled along the boulevard bundled in furs. I wandered from bar to café with one drink bleeding into another, one drug morphing into the next, without finding a soul with whom I could tipple and commiserate. The loneliness was crippling. I drank prodigiously. It bordered on the suicidal.
Since moving to Europe, I had estranged myself from the friends I had left behind and those I knew in Berlin. Christmas had come to mean no family, no friends, no feast. This most important holidays had been reduced to an endless supply of wine and a galaxy of drugs.
By the time I settled into the last bar I would visit that Christmas eve, my brain was pulsating with dizzy swirls and throbbing lines. My vision had skewed into flipping horizontal patterns. Everything was in fish-eyed perspective. I could no longer tell the difference between day or night.
Maxim Argilagos
I’m Home
A million years of agony
are finished now I guess
My soul’s confusion has come to an end
I’m able to feel happiness
That small piece of being some call life
I’ve been a homeward bounded guy
Now after traveling so long
I found a place where I can die
I can’t believe I’m home
I can’t believe the trouble’s gone
I can’t believe I’m free
And finally the last step’s done
That the process of my liberty
Is finished after…
Reaching home
Salvation is so hard to find
And maybe this one’s not the place
But as long as feelings ease my mind
I won’t look for other ways
I can’t believe I’m home
I can’t believe the trouble’s gone
I can’t believe I’m free
And finally the last step’s done
That the process of my liberty
Is finished now.
Anthony Baggette
The Evidence Lays in Grandma’s Eyes
The evidence lays in Grandma’s eyes ,
All she does is cry
jets fill the skies droppin’ bombs instead of books.
The evidence lays in Mama’s eyes
someone shouted gold and started a stampede
that planted the seed of greed even made Miles change his style.
The evidence lays in the knocked up sisters eyes,
As tears fall from the tortured prisoners eyes
The evidence lays in the thunder of the plunder.
The evidence lays in Papa’s eyes
as he runs from another car bomb blast.
The evidence lays in the eyes of the child standin’ in a cloud of gas.
The evidence lays in the night sounds that ring out
When you see the fear in your sister’s eyes.
The evidence lays in the dyin’ soldiers eyes.
The evidence lays in the oil spill,
mass kill just over the hill, and killer bees
racism is up , war items are glowin’ red hot.
The evidence lays in the governments lies.
The evidence lays in your sleepin’ on the street cousins eyes.
The evidence lays your in eyes when you read another lie passed off as fact.
The evidence lays in the butt naked table dancin’ runaways eyes.
The evidence lays in yet another over crowed then over turned refugee boat
The evidence lays in the uncounted votes.
While Aunt Lucy didn’t even cast her vote cause she was watchin’ re-runs of Love Boat,
The evidence lays in the sounds of the drive by,
The evidence lays in the gang raped young girls eyes.
The evidence lays in the Native people’s eyes.
The evidence lays in the missin’ father’s eyes.
The evidence lays in the Junkie’s eyes.
The evidence lays in Freedie’s eyes and Freddie’s dead.
The evidence lays in Grandma’s eyes and Grandma’s eyes are
lookin’ straight into your eyes.
And Grandma’s eyes don’t lie,
so open up the gates, fan the flames ,
and let the good times roll
cause if there’s a hell below,
we all gonna go.
Sharon Dodua Otoo
Safely…
She knows the silence will comfort her eventually –
It’s been that way for more moments of pain than she feels to remember.
Her glass is empty again. This time, the bottle is too.
She stands up…safely.
She’s seeking a place of warmth and sisterhood…
It doesn’t flow like the red wine dripping.
Carpets are stained, but who really cares?
She walks on…safely.
It’s been a while now…at least an unbearable minute.
That rising feeling will not subside – or step aside – or even – just slide
…just
…slide
It could have been perfect, the on-point comment,
but now it’s too late
and nothing they say, will make her stay:
safely.
Philipp Khabo Koepsell
Fanfare For The Colonized
Crushed underneath the broken marble of former empires
lies an entire narrative
of the bloody conquest
the colonial scroll palimpsest
the interest in the unrest
the beginning and the end
The clock struck 12 in the marble hall palace
When they sat around a table
with a ruler and map
where the ink of the day
stained a sleeve of a king
same thing stained a shore
oversees bloody gore
It is a story of explorers
of the glory of those soldiers
who drove thousands into deserts
to give space for mining diamonds
to give space for fields of barley
for the white men’s dream of glory
for the steam train and grazing ground
for German cows in Africa.
The ruby-coloured marble
and the brazen plates in memory
of those who murdered children
in the name of Kaiser Wilhelm
form the ground on which we stand today
the place in which we congregate
The memory of things
of skulls and concentration camps
a nightmare undisguised
It lies fat and blond in front of you
in delightful arrogance
rubbing onto curbs
with a piggy snout to shout at you:
You’re just oversensitive!
Why should we apologize,
we colonized not much…
O, they will tell you of tradition
of the mapping of the world
of the mapping of your minds
and whatever makes them tick
The names are redacted
Numbers are redacted
documents are lost and their existence denied.
It’s just the marble underneath, and the names of some places,
and the words that we use, and the songs that we sing, and the goods that we buy,
and the games that we play, and the fact
that we all know too well what “a Hottentott” is.
We can’t read the script?
We don’t write our stories?
We can’t navigate in landscapes
where the white men claim of glory?
Motherfucker, we have maps too!
We have studied all the details.
We derail that rusty steam train
We can rename all your heroes and you won’t even know!
We can blow that marble up, you see.
We can write this history
and the last time this is to be reminding us of brighter dreams
and monuments of greater men
we make the marble break again
and break again
and break again.
Whirl thru the dust
like we must not stop
until we wake to face a brighter day
brighter day
brighter day
and we write that damn story
from the bottom to the top
While all you smart mand professors may go on
Ingrid Mwangi Robert Hutter
I dreamt that a beautiful, dark, eerie, shimmering representation of something visited me in my sleep. A gentle voice whispered to me, and when I looked up I saw her shining dark light over everything. ‘Please help me to understand’, I implored, suffering the ignorance of doubt. ‘Is it enough, what does it say, what does it want to tell people?’ I felt tears prick my eyes and felt shame for my emotions.
‘Don’t you know?’, the gentle voice asked every so gently. ‘Believe-lieve-lieve’, echoed over my heated body. Confusedly, I raised my hand and touched myself to see if I was there. ‘Is that all!’ I shouted, but immediately felt bad about my impatience. ‘Is that all…’ a whisper through my dry lips. I felt her smile like a warm, cooling breeze. Then: ‘believe in yourself-elf, your beauty-uty, your creativity-ivity, your importance-ance.’ And then, I heard it quite clearly: ‘Trust yourselves to speak.’
Elisabeth Argilagos
Yemaya
Salty taste on my skin
Icy air arouses my hair
All this snow cannot stop it
The ocean flows through me
I wear its sign
Sea water tears
Under the moon
Raging monsoon
Creation divine
The ocean flows through me
Rolls its waves
Old mistakes and new beginnings
On and on
Slides on itself
Rushes, crashes
Throws itself
Onto the sand
Digs in it
Loving it
Sinking into it
Getting lost in it
Before
Rapidly withdrawing
Into its blue home
Blaq Pearl
My African Dream
This is my African Dream
Children walking the streets, no fear and running free
This is my African Dream
No more dying and crying for nothing
This is my African Dream
I see the world through the eyes of my family
This is my African Dream
Where I can find some peace within
This is my African Dream
Just let me sing – let me be – let me feel, it
It’s easier dreaming
Living, clubbing, not realizing, we’re hostage,
In My African Dream
Need to know what it means, even if it kills,
Deep Thoughts stimulating
Encouraging moms and dads to think, before Speaking…
My African Dream
Got people standing up, raising fists – Believing
My African Dream
Souls are free, we all speak, of what we feed – We seeing
My African Dream
No need to fight, we’re alright – No dividing
My African Dream
Money, Politics and Greed – Non existing
Now in My African Dream
I see a place where people live in – harmony
In My African Dream
Our grass are green, we’re at peace and – creating
In My African Dream
Skies are blue, we stay true to – our meaning
In My African Dream
The light that leads, shines brighter – within me
Arriving In The Future 