tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28501250823670000362011-04-21T11:36:50.544-07:00a forum for diasporic experimentation and innovation in literatureajhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18245201556674184948noreply@blogger.comBlogger11100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2850125082367000036.post-7719291004180306912007-11-05T06:54:00.000-08:002007-11-05T06:56:37.037-08:00<strong>DEAR POET</strong><br /><strong></strong><br />Why you write that neo-surrealist<br />Intertextual quiltwork of untreated fabulation stuff<br />That seems to make no sense<br />And gives me a headache trying to figure out<br />Why brothaz like you<br />Mr Ronnie McGrath<br />Anthony Joseph and Sun Ra<br />Be complicating things<br />And filling our headz with nonsense about<br />The African Origins of UFO’s<br />“Breaking out the sky like the indelible mark of a comet<br />Like an ankh”<br />Like the “Negro of my features is as absent as the pharaohs nose”<br />The “Provocative lips of your colouring pencils drowning in a watercolour”<br />Come on, man!<br />What’s that about?<br />Lets face it!<br />You brothaz be getting praised<br />Be getting paid for Nothin!<br />And now white people be laughing at us<br />Thinking that we have truly lost our mindz in an<br />Outpouring of a perpetual search for the new<br />Thinking our body of literature is penned by four year olds in kente-cloths with dashiki patterns<br />Thinking our music isn’t really music at all<br />Just a sound texture in search of form<br />YEAH!<br />Thanks to you<br />Ronnie McGrath<br />Thanks to you<br />Anthony Joseph<br />Thanks to you<br />Mr Kamau Braithwaite<br />Nathaniel Mackey<br />Bob Kaufman<br />Amiri Baraka<br />Clarence Major<br />Darius James<br />Ted Joans<br />Ornette Coleman<br />Cecil Taylor<br />Sun Ra<br />George Clinton<br />And the most out-there of you all (if there is such a thing in your feral bunch of Gypsies)<br />Mr Lee Scratch Perry and his “arkworks of inventions.”<br />“I’m a toaster, not a boaster” indeed<br />Come on, Scratch,<br />What the hell are you playin’ at?<br />It’s 2007, MAN!!!!!!!!!!!<br />Can you all make some fuckin’ sense – PLEASE!<br /><br /><em>Ronnie McGrath</em><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>DEAR READER</strong><br /><strong><br /></strong>PEEPle be sZtukk<br />In their wayz<br />2 mch telvizion<br />&amp; a lack of imaginashion<br />Stopping them frm dreeeeemin<br />A mch Bettah wirld than<br />they con-sum-e in alcho-pops<br />And mair-I-warna cunvirszations of<br />How high they wir the weak/week b4<br />&amp; how they cdn’t stop larfing frm the effekt of weeeed smowke<br /><br />Stomach bus-sted open<br />twisted up<br />buckle-drunk on<br />krazzy ssshit powems<br />with ttwisted eyeballs tht cud’nt C strait<br /><br />Their abstrakt thowt patterns<br />maykin them think<br />diffrently abowt themselvez<br />C-ing the worl 4 what it reel-y is<br />not perm-an-ent<br />or outside of clothes and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E<br /><br />Bt drezzed up↑ in texts<br />in the illuzion of what they call sense &amp; lojjikc<br />in the illuszzion of what they call formula<br />the countrees of their mindz in need of chaos and serendipity<br />loosen their limbz &amp; pass the peace-pipe<br /><br />Dear REEDER<br />people<br />be stuk in their own shooze<br />their own clothes<br />wearin’ 1 pair of glasses<br />&amp; drinkin’ frm their favourite cup<br />drivin their own karrs<br />to their OWN homes<br />to C THEIR CHILDREN<br />Bt stukkk in the lonely traffikk<br />By themselvz<br />Their musikk<br />An ipodic world of graate distance<br />Pluggin’ them into even more lonliness<br />Their roadz leadin to nowhere<br />‘cept from whenz they kame to go bck again<br />Mayke sense??????????????????????????<br /><br /><em>Ronnie McGrath</em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2850125082367000036-771929100418030691?l=newblackavantgarde.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>ajhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18245201556674184948noreply@blogger.com1