my name is kalamu
i am african-diaspora
i am ancient and new
i am african-american
i am resistance and assimilation
i am a proud and pure cultural mulatto
i am well used labor unemployed
i am illiterate intelligence
i am beauty deformed
i am the fuel of pan-american cultures
i am freedom without wealth
in my world of constant war
i am a country with no army
i am everyone’s love song
and even though no one wants to be me
—some times not even i—
with the tender touch of my calloused hand
i continue tending the fruit and flower garden of me
i am raped human wise enough to nevertheless
love my woman self, knowing no woman
survives slavery untouched
i am tubman feet willfully returning again
and again to steal my people away
from thieves
i have killed my children to save them from slavery
i have nursed my children, black and mulatto,
teaching them all to respect and value life
who knows the pain of slave pregnancy: nine
months of growing a baby who will surely
be beaten down—i know
i have sold myself to save my daughters
and sons from the defilement of poverty
i have denied myself and extinguished
my dream candles to light a chance for my children
i have chewed the centuries old flag of degradation every
morning and miraculously somehow managed to suck
small droplets of hope from the warp and woof of filth
which i transformed into warm milk and
breastfed to my babies
no woman knows how to love better than i
—i love strong men and love pieces
of men, i love all my babies no matter
the shade of their skin, and even in the deepest
white night of my despair, i also love myself
i wrap our wounds with the silk strong softness of my caring
and the salve cream of my patient quietness hugging
hurt to the huge humanness of my heart
knowing that for us, the survivors of slavery,
there is no better therapy than love and struggle, so
i freely supply the love and steadfastly support the struggle
i am emasculated man collaborating and consciously forgetting
to emulate zumbi, nat turner & toussaint
i am self-emancipating man resisting
with words, with music, with arms
with whatever, an enduring mandela of resistance
sometimes i kill my master and love my brother
sometimes i kill my brother and love my master
sometimes i just kill everything
sometimes i kill nothing
sometimes i love no one
sometimes i love everyone
even i cannot predict how i will feel/
what i will think
what day is this?
what is happening?
civilization did not birth me
civilization could not create me
civilization in enslaving me
disfigured but ultimately failed
to totally transform me
they tried conquest and captivity
they expounded dead thinking that stinks
they ceaselessly exploited the strength of my
labor and shamelessly, in the name of development,
they forged for me an endless debt
they legislated my dependenc3e, my marginalization
my alienation
they blessed me and so-called saved me
using all the inhumanity christian masters
could stuff into my mouth
but my vomit is beautiful
my spit is song
my tears are laughter
five hundred years of civilization
and the mases of me still
will not cut our hair
shave all our faces
cover our mouths when we laugh
or stop making music, love and babies
i am stronger than dirt
but sometimes i am so full of shit
you can smell me a mile away
sometimes
sometimes i drink too many “sorry-for-my-selves” on ice
or gulp glasses full of warm “we-will-never-wins”
until i reel in a drunken self-depreciating stupor
sometimes i am irresponsible and despondent
sometimes i give up hope, wear black ties and
declare my blackness should not be noticed
sometimes i flash diamond rings and do not care
that they are the stolen teeth
of south african miners, crystallized tears
from brasilian favelas
sometimes i act like i am big stuff
and demand to be treated like a rich slave
merchant whose only concern for blackness is how
i can profit
sometimes i even expertly wield the whip of oppression
like some half-human latin american
dictator decored with rows and rows of brutality
medals made of broken bones pinned gloriously
across my puffed-up chest
or at the very least i aspire to be a u.s. senator
smoking a long cigar, drinking rare cognac and laughing
at the donkey fucking the native woman at the private
floor show staged in my honor after i have cut
a deal and sit bloated with pride, unbelievably happy
about the good fortune of my lucrative sell-out
or is it some monster criminal i admire with big hat,
blazing fast guns and cocained realities
or maybe i’m the infamous international singer with
thirty thousand tight dresses, surgically shaped
breasts, a beautiful voice and a string of male
lovers, none of whom look like me
sometimes i look in the mirror and i am not there
but that invisible self-negation is also me, sometimes
nevertheless no matter where parts of me may run
most of me always remains
bare foot on the ground watching the elite
be driven over me as they thank
their new gods that they are no longer me
although i am sometimes a thing,
a wild monster grown fat on self-cannibalism, the majority
of me is a creature of the earth and not an object
sprung fully formed from the forehead of some great european
in essence i am simply a wonderful being, like so many others
in this world teeming with amazing delights,
there are so many uncaged birds and happy fish,
fast multi-colored horses and me
there are hard wood trees and wispy clouds, wild mountains
naked beaches and me
there are trade winds, gently baked moon illuminations,
white foaming green waves and me
i am not a creation of men, those
creations are automobiles and toilet seats
televisions and rocket ships, cheeseburgers and satellites
box me in a ship and send me
to brasil, sill i am me
tie me in a seat and fly me
to new york still am me
drop me on a burro and walk me
to bluefields (in nica. libre) i remain me
slow cruise me secretly me secretly at night
from grenada to barbados, antigua
to st. kitts, martinque to trinidad
to any of them, to all of them
what do i become? in essence
nothing different because the insides
of all of that is me
no matter the currency or rate of exchange
no matter the longitude or location of our u.n. seat
no matter the year of our abolition
no matter when we first voted
or who was our first rich man
no mater how many sport games we win
or how much we are paid to shake our ass
no matter your perception
or my subjectivity
even as we are cut by colonial customs
into portuguese pieces, into spanish pieces
into french pieces and english pieces
no matter in what way each of our
twists their tongue in order to articulate
our sounds
none of that matters
if i hug you hard and you kiss me sincerely
if i and i music together
dance samba, play pans
kiaso, gospel and jazz
if we wage struggle wherever we are
and enjoy peace in each other’s presence
if we laugh at ourselves with each other
and are serious about helping one another
if i love what you see in me
and you love what i see in you
if we seek each other’s substance
and eschew each other’s shadow
if my liberty is your freedom
and your equality my upliftment
if my brother is maurice bishop
and your brother is malcolm x
if this, then what does a name matter?
my name is kalamu,
that is how i am called
but inside the fullness of me i know
my whole name must include all your names,
all the handles you use, indeed
our ancestors sagaciously buffed
our resplendent obsidian inner-spirit walls
preparing us to receive the hieroglyphed history
of our common conditions which chatteled centuries
have etched into each of us, black
codes mutely detailing, once we learn
to read ourselves, the deep and someday
soon shining joy soaked futures
we all would love to taste
when we braille read the keloided past
of us and sight read the as yet unformed
future of us, then today’s names can be seen
for exactly what they are and no more,
simply little squibbles, just different
little catch phrases conveniently used
to detail specific manifestations of
a talented and multi-textured black experience
whose nucleus is foreign to none of us
when i learn to pronounce your name
i am simply discovering
another me
my name is kalamu
now,
what is yours?
tell me how to speak my name
rio/4
10/87
—kalamu ya salaam