OF WANDERING TELL-TALE TRUTHS OF AN OLD GRIOT WHOSE TIME HAS BEEN SET...

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OF WANDERING TELL-TALE TRUTHS

OF AN OLD GRIOT WHOSE TIME HAS BEEN SET…

PROLOGUE

Hello, my children.  Come travel with me

as I reflect upon the journey.

The recall may not be easy—the sojourn

often seeming not to go in a direct path—

Sometimes going back and forth before

getting back on track: it’s a Griot’s tale.

                        I

Come and know that crushed truth

will always rise and reveal its inevitability

that we—the hued ones—were and will

always be the beginning of human creation

from the soils of Mother Africa’s fertility!

The Fertile Crescent and Nile River Valleys

held and still hold an umbilical navel relation

with the hued extended Mesopotamian family—

despite the prodigious misconception of history

in its erroneous citing of the Cradle of Civilization!

Long before the unveiling of the Garden of Eden,

humans first saw the day’s light on the continent of Africa.

Yes!  Africa is not a country—she’s the second largest continent

with more than fifty countries—embodied—within her:

Truth—crushed to the ground—rises and can’t be hidden.

                                    II

There can no longer be any doubt that the first beings

sprung from the loins of Africa—The Mother of humankind.

Indeed it was out of the soil of Africa—not Mesopotamia—

that humanity –world civilization began to gloriously climb.

Arise—open your mind’s eyes—and it will clearly be seen.

Ancient Egyptians—from Menes to Cleopatra—were sable souls;

and there can be no doubt that they were truly of African lineage.

Know that the great Queen of the South—the Queen of Sheba—black

and comely—can't be denied her distinctive Ethiopian heritage.

No longer be fooled by the lying pale-face of their Hollywood image.

Check the ancient kingdoms of Ghana, Mali and Songhay—gestalt!

these West African empires traded pounds of gold for pounds of salt!

Under Askia the Great, Timbuktu was known as an intellectual paradise

where scholars came from the Moslem world and from Europe to study

law, literature, surgery, poetry and geography, at the University of Sankore.

INTERLUDE

Come, children…listen with your eyes

and understand the griots’ words

left by the ancestors to share our story

that you may free your mind of distorted

his story—filled with imprisoned tell-tale lies.

                            III

Continuous documents of life lived and gone

lay buried beneath earth’s various layers;

documents more precious than gold

and petrified bone; save the questioning

of the Creation Sayers.

Cannot dead evidence give life to the truth?

Is there a reason that Noah’s Ark must be fantasy?!

Should we question the story of Ruth?!

What religion teaches, science gives creative reality:

In the end, truth is served in spirituality.

Faith is nourished on belief in both seen and unseen;

both relying on what is revealed of the beginning scene.

What a daunting challenge to our pillars of intellectual tiers?

Is not the revelations unearthed by the faithful pursuit

of palaeontology the resurrected evidence

of that which has given rise to our religiosity?

                            IV

See-sawing along the shores of life,

gazing upon the reflecting light,

we grasp keloids of memories—running.

And like fishermen of food, we web together

the broken pieces of history

and cast our nets into the sea—the sea

of perseverance catching hope harnessing redemption.

The word remains mightier than the sword;

spirited into being in the space that gave birth to time;

manifesting circadian rhythms of life.

Man, cocooned in the Garden of Eden,

sought light, and the serpent showed a flash—

a streak of insufficient false power—

in the image, a Pompeii spark;

and all hell broke loose.

But ashes have a kind of Phoenix entity

that teases with spiralling smoke of resurrection;

puffing seeds germinate and grow new beginnings.

Out of the chaos of the inequality, serfdom and royalty,

ships sailed upon the wrinkles of ocean waves—

ironing creases to Middle Passage overtures

of an American symphony—scarring the history

of all so-called civilized humanity.

Neither new nor strange, but peculiar became

the systematic dawning of a creation

that only man could bring into being and sustain;

an evil mythological justification of suffering’s

redemptive nature; America the beautiful:

new Adams; new Eves; new world beginnings—

slithering snakes in the green grass of chaos.

                               V

Why we were chosen to be here, we had no say;

Seemingly born into this world without any reason

or rhyme. Yet we must strive to live each and every day

with wonder, bliss, and full of glorious sunshine:

For glorified purpose needs no reason or rhyme.

Within and upon this temporary terrestrial plain,

we must roam across the vast frontier

etching our footprints in the muddy path.

It is the footprints we leave here

that will only have a permanent home

where each day and its night has

the inevitable culling of the human herd.

Indeed, time is the only permanent friend we have

on life’s perilous ride—time and God be one and

the only known companion

who will welcome us on the other side.

                             VI

Miracles are of angels—even the fallen ones;

remember this.

And know that the devil is as much a lie today

as ever:

as when with wolves like Pharaoh, Ahab, and

Jezebel.

Though he may ride high today, certainly he will

surely fall tomorrow; it has been seen and predicted

again…prophesized.

Look through the tears of blood; see the fall coming:

no lie can live forever…only truth.

While the night’s injustice seems to be upon us,

know the stars are twinkling; that the sunshine

of justice will surely rise; that Satan and his angles

will just as surely fall as does the lightning falling

from heaven: resurrection is no lie.

EPILOGUE

                                  VII

Heroes have been silenced—Gone…leaders contained;

the warriors are now married to the earth, and we

have been divorced again from justice—Cast aside again.

The fruits of the journey lay rotting in abandoned

dream sheds. 

Paradoxically, slavery showed strange equanimity;

its suffering displayed no discrimination—All

equally sharing its debilitation…equally denied

any sympathy over the Middle Passage odyssey.

A strange institution indeed was chattel slavery;

let us who share its bitter legacy,

fight till totally free.

Rise up, Black man! Black woman! Black child!  

No longer be defiled;

we’ve already too many centuries to reconcile.

                                    VIII

Trails leading once to survival hunting grounds

have now become urban streets of survival

for the godforsaken hued, helpless hunted.

The once dark-hued four-legged prey has become

the two-legged prized shot of the day—lawfully

slain—justified homicide of a hued runaway.

Once spared cubs and siblings have now become

the first whose flesh welcomes the sting of agents

of death—silver bullets—seeking black bull’s eye backs.

Gutters that once received water flowing to sea,

have now become reservoirs of flowing blood—

tears of mourners flowing down wrinkled faces.

Unbalanced veiled justice stands and watches

as injustice prevails in its Manifest Destiny;

and bigotry’s bordered blasphemous laws remain.

But let us fear not; in due time God’s justice is coming.

In faith, fighting with the strength of the Lion of Judah,

let us not yield to weariness.

We’ve come this far on the chariot of faith…fighting

for things hoped for. 

Though not yet seen, freedom is coming in due time

of promise; and we shall rise as on wings of eagles—Soaring.

Let us not be weary and dismayed by Armageddon oppressors;

rather, let us heed the message of liberation; listening and being

of good courage:

(“Those who are evil will not survive but those who are righteous…”)

Our God shall will life and everlasting liberation in due time.

                                    IX

In the deep winter womb of mind, let the heart

glow with the fervent hope un-denied; hope

in due seasons of faith firmly fitted for the testing.

Though life’s winding stairway seems to veil much, know

we are children of the sun, under which all revelations

are reflected yesterday, today, and tomorrow:

Come let us continue to plough the revealing journey.

Let us continue to sow pregnant seeds in the fertile rows

the struggle has raised and folded on Mother Earth’s face.

Let us continue to mulch the seedlings of our visions

that in due time in fields of dreams, we may yet reap

ripening fruits of promised emancipation.

Know that when the harvest is plentiful, so must be

the reapers—that our plough sheds not be abandoned

burdens of emptiness that ghost dreams left; nor like

crack shells that once housed eggs that life left stuck

in the mud of fear.  Rather let us walk the footsteps

tracked and dried in fear’s mud.

                             X

            Come my children…come…

            let us not be like offspring of Sisyphus:

            rocks, like their statues, can’t grow.

We are the ebony children of the tree of life;

destined not to wander the proverbial desert,

but to fly to mountain tops as on phoenix wings;

swooping down in due seasons into the valley—

mighty talons clasping the evil monster of injustice.

Indeed, no lie can live forever.  The cold winter

blast of injustice shall become as ice

in the rising sun—coming like Joshua to the walls

of Jericho—melting “in”—leaving  â€œjustice” flowing

like a mighty river cascading into the sea of redemption.

So let us not wallow in the weakness of despair

nor be in distress; for in due time we shall be

delivered from lying lips and deceitful tongues.

As if by two-headed arrows, balancing new scales

of justice, the All Seeing Eye watches from up on high

and in due season, spring and hope shall usher in

a new day of freedom, peace and order:

Justice and righteousness ringing down a new world order

of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man—

a new world order pregnant with the Motherhood of love.