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