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“Adding their voices to the chorus of Black Lives, Albuquerque Poets Hakim Bellamy, Charles Simon and Marilyn Pettes Hill hope to awaken America to the racism it has slept on for far too long.”

Another New Mexico PBS Production…thank you to my fellow poets Marilyn and Charles, as well as Tara Walch.

For the culture. For the people. For the love. Check it out on Facebook here.

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”—Charles Baudelaire (later Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects, 1995)

Like Keyser Söze, systemic racism’s greatest trick was convincing the world it didn’t exist.

Call you crazy for hearing things, slurs and threats.

For seeing things that go fire in the night,

right on your front lawn.

A Boogeyman that knows where you do and do not live, an unsolved church bombing underneath the bed.

A package with no return address.

Used to disguise, only ever occasionally flirt with celebrity. Might show a little leg when kicking the shit out of you,

But completely disrobing, coming out from beneath the face covering used to be sacrilegious.

There was a time when white power had a belief system too.

Nowadays, racism is no longer a “medical condition”, is no longer color

blind.

Once invisible it is all the way out the closet. A minstrel show of itself.

It is popular. It is broad daylight.

It is a choke hold instead of a noose.

Close enough to whisper sweet lynchings in your ear.

Nowadays, racism is intimate. Nowadays, racism is insolent. Nowadays, racism is infamous.

Nowadays, you can see it coming… in your rear view.

No mask.

Like Keyser Söze, systemic racism

is criminal.

The one who got away with it. A devil

jealous of our existence.

#Hakim Bellamy #Charles Simon #Marilyn Pettes Hill #For the culture #Spoken Word #Poem #Poetry #Black Lives Matter #Movement for Black Lives #George Floyd #Breonna Taylor #ahmad arbery #tony mcdade #Slam Poem #Slam Poetry #New Mexico PBS #The Usual Suspects #Verbal Kint #Neo-Noir Mystery

"Salvation” By Langston Hughes I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen. But not really saved. It happened like this. There was a big revival at my Auntie Reed's church. Every night for weeks there had been much preaching, singing, praying, and shouting, and some very hardened sinners had been brought to Christ, and the membership of the church had grown by leaps and bounds. Then just before the revival ended, they held a special meeting for children, "to bring the young lambs to the fold." My aunt spoke of it for days ahead. That night I was escorted to the front row and placed on the mourners' bench with all the other young sinners, who had not yet been brought to Jesus. My aunt told me that when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! And God was with you from then on! She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul. I believed her. I had heard a great many old people say the same thing and it seemed to me they ought to know. So I sat there calmly in the hot, crowded church, waiting for Jesus to come to me. The preacher preached a wonderful rhythmical sermon, all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell, and then he sang a song about the ninety and nine safe in the fold, but one little lamb was left out in the cold. Then he said: "Won't you come? Won't you come to Jesus? Young lambs, won't you come?" And he held out his arms to all us young sinners there on the mourners' bench. And the little girls cried. And some of them jumped up and went to Jesus right away. But most of us just sat there. A great many old people came and knelt around us and prayed, old women with jet-black faces and braided hair, old men with work-gnarled hands. And the church sang a song about the lower lights are burning, some poor sinners to be saved. And the whole building rocked with prayer and song. Still I kept waiting to see Jesus. Finally all the young people had gone to the altar and were saved, but one boy and me. He was a rounder's son named Westley. Westley and I were surrounded by sisters and deacons praying. It was very hot in the church, and getting late now. Finally Westley said to me in a whisper: "God damn! I'm tired o' sitting here. Let's get up and be saved." So he got up and was saved. Then I was left all alone on the mourners' bench. My aunt came and knelt at my knees and cried, while prayers and song swirled all around me in the little church. The whole congregation prayed for me alone, in a mighty wail of moans and voices. And I kept waiting serenely for Jesus, waiting, waiting - but he didn't come. I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me. Nothing! I wanted something to happen to me, but nothing happened. I heard the songs and the minister saying: "Why don't you come? My dear child, why don't you come to Jesus? Jesus is waiting for you. He wants you. Why don't you come? Sister Reed, what is this child's name?" "Langston," my aunt sobbed. "Langston, why don't you come? Why don't you come and be saved? Oh, Lamb of God! Why don't you come?" Now it was really getting late. I began to be ashamed of myself, holding everything up so long. I began to wonder what God thought about Westley, who certainly hadn't seen Jesus either, but who was now sitting proudly on the platform, swinging his knickerbockered legs and grinning down at me, surrounded by deacons and old women on their knees praying. God had not struck Westley dead for taking his name in vain or for lying in the temple. So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I'd better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved. So I got up. Suddenly the whole room broke into a sea of shouting, as they saw me rise. Waves of rejoicing swept the place. Women leaped in the air. My aunt threw her arms around me. The minister took me by the hand and led me to the platform. When things quieted down, in a hushed silence, punctuated by a few ecstatic "Amens," all the new young lambs were blessed in the name of God. Then joyous singing filled the room. That night, for the first time in my life but one for I was a big boy twelve years old - I cried. I cried, in bed alone, and couldn't stop. I buried my head under the quilts, but my aunt heard me. She woke up and told my uncle I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into my life, and because I had seen Jesus. But I was really crying because I couldn't bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadn't seen Jesus, and that now I didn't believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn't come to help me.

***My maternal grandmother’s last name was Hughes, no relation. My younger brother, Rasheed, and Langston are both graduates of Lincoln University. “Salvation” is Chapter 3 in Langston’s autobiography The Big Sea***

...and here’s the poem.

Chapter Three*

Langston,

I remember witnessing your Salvation.

Drawn and cornered

belly up

cross a big Blackish

brackish

sea

of peeps,

long before we knew

how to swim.

You were just a buoy.

How did you get a whole church

to listen to you?

To say your name?

Even though you didn't

believe.

Or couldn't?

Uninterested

in a God who could save you

from yourself.

More interested

in a god who could save

the world.

How did you get a whole country,

a whole world

to believe

in your almost 13 year-old self.

When you couldn’t hear him,

but they could

hear you?

That metronome of pain

called “blues.”

That sad turned happy.

That happy

in the sad…

and you

called us Jazz.

The Gospel of Langston.

Wondering why God didn’t save

you from that church.

Rapture you

and that whole entire pew.

Deaf to him

but not Auntie Reed…

imploring you to "come home, baby"

to a paradise you couldn’t breathe

nor see.

But planking anyhow

towards a preacher who could barely read

the scripture in your bones.

But you stiil didn’t give up the ghost…

Found God in the things you wrote

even though you couldn’t hear you.

Don’t believe you God?

Just take a look at the way

that the white men feared you

and eventually canonized the Black off you

and your "Blacker the Berry" Bible papers.

But you’ve always been Harlem.

Cotton Club never cotton pickin’,

nor cotton mouthed.

The pride of Joplin and

Lawrence, Kansas

but blew the spot

like a landmine in the South.

…

Chose to write about the shrapnel instead,

which makes you the unofficial Negro National Anthem

of letters.

Now, I can finally say

I understand how hard it is

for the resurrected

to believe in resurrections…

And why you can’t hear God

when you are

his penmanship.

Video Credit: Kayla Jenae

#langston #langston hughes #hakim be #hakim bellamy #The Langston Hughes Project #harlem renaissance #Harlem #Albuquerque #Popejoy Hall #Spoken Word #Slam Poetry #Jazz Poetry #Jazz Poet #Black

Gigi (for Grandma)

by Hakim & Rasheed

R: When you found her

amidst the perpetual clamor of

ball busting and laughter

that is her seven boys

H (waving): and Aunt Deb

R: you were left to wonder

why if she is so quiet,

H: they are so damn loud.

R: Because,

as I later learned from her

H: your children

serve as a monument to your character.

How they treat themselves,

Both: others and each other

H: says more about you than you ever could.

R: But don’t confuse her for the strong silent type

Grandma, now that you are an ancestor

Both: we ask your permission to speak for you.

H: Grandma always smelt like the calm after a Myrtle Beach hurricane

made of Butter Beans and back roads full of tradition.

Baptized in blood, sweat, and fears unwashed away in the moonshine swill

Both: but grandma still

H: and stay still prayed up

Always in the front pew

never in the back of the bus.

R: Lived her own love story

up and down the hallways

of the Appalachian Mountains

and the Atlantic Ocean.

Sent a handful of kids to war,

be it Vietnam,

H: or North Philly streets,

R: boxing rings

H: or marriage rings,

R: a testimony

to the kind of upbringing

that has outlived her,

that has seen her through

all the way to the credits.

H: A life of service, on her feet

that deserves a standing ovation

almost as much as it desires to take a seat.

The family nurse

dishing miracles by the meal to the sick

type of cooking you get in line for

R: could teach Gordon Ramsey a few tricks

H: could make a multitude out of scratch.

R: You ever heard the one about…?

H: The Parable of Priscilla?

Five loaves

and two catfish

Both: Grandma could break bread out of thin air!

R: Even from her walker,

later wheelchair,

she let her resume

speak for itself

… in laughter.

H: Even In momma jokes.

But greatgrandmama,

R: and her sweet potato pie,

H: was no joke.

R: Her laugh

was a signature of approval

from a life well worked

and even weller lived.

H: But see my Grandma, my sign

Got so gangsta sometimes

she put the Double “G” in Gause and Gemini.

R: What he’s trying to say is

her smile was worth fighting for,

so much so stand-up became the family pastime.

Both: But if she woke up on the wrong side of Sunday

H: you might meet your Maker for the last time!

R: The type of saint that wouldn’t hesitate to grab an extension cord

H: to keep the lights on…

R: The type of saint that would send you for your own switch

H: to cut the light on!

R: Could have a church fan flapping like a hummingbird wing,

raise your hand if my grandma taught you why the caged bird sings

Both: ...she sang cause she fly.

H: But don’t let that church hat fool you,

her floss is all grind

and grace.

The wife of

R: "Take all you eat,

but eat all you take."

Both: She lived through

sharecropping, the Great Migration, and Ronald Reagan,

JBM, Move, and Philly’s 1st Black Mayor

9-11, Grandpa's cancer, the 1st Black President

thirteen greatgrandchildren later…

R: It makes her more than just a Grandmother

Both: she was history

H: in the making.

H: Not an author, a preacher

or a writer,

she a “Boy, you better write til you got arthritis”

R: She was more than a short story, more like a novel

she was a gospel

on to her next chapter…

Both: So all that’s left to say is,

R: “Say Hi to Grandpa,

H: Grandma.”

#Bellamy #Priscilla #Gause #Hakim Bellamy #Hakim Be #Rasheed Bellamy #Priscilla Gause Bellamy #Bellamying #Spoken Word #Eulogy #Love #Going Home Poem #Poem #Tribute #Obituary #Grandchildren #Grandchild

“Dick Gregory,” Hakim Bellamy

you said war was a joke

except you meant it

not a mean bone in your body

all funny ones made it harder to break you

served your country for eighty-two years

minus the two you spent in the military

served your country a plate of mirrors

and told us to smile

served black people a glass of ourselves

and told us to drink up

if we were still hungry

#Hakim Bellamy #poem #poetry #memoriam #Dick Gregory

Dope show. Thank you John Flypoet Hensley. Good to reconnect with Javon Johnson who did his damn thang. Cocoa Brown was uber funny, Andre Washington of All-4-One sang his arse off, and Norton Wisdom made LIVE art. Great fun, awesome venue...you Cali folk should check it out. Thank you Kieran for getting me to everything ON TIME! ;) Hakim Bellamy - Chronometrophobia (Video courtesy of Mark Fischer) #Chronomentrophobia

#hakim #hakim bellamy #cali #Flypoet #spoken word

It's been a week and then some. I plan on being sleep before the sun goes down. I'm going to leave you with the Tavis Smiley Radio Show that aired today. Thank you Amanda & West End Press for making that happen for me. I feel mo' blessed, especially because my son was able to listen to daddy on the radio in South Jersey with my parents. I hope he is proud of me. Link:http://bit.ly/1rG9sqo