I wrote this on the spot as an in car lullaby for my son as I was driving home with him after picking him up from his mother's after being in Nepal for 21 days (thanks to her help) and not seeing him for three weeks. He collaborated with me on the vocals at the end. He is 6 years old, and I love him dearly.

BabyBack (This Song Is NOT About Ribs)

From Mohandis K. Gandhi to Michael Luther King, Jr.

Michael, I’m sorry

It’s not fair
At least I got to meet my grandchildren
Before my people turned on me

I should have told you
That satyagraha will get you killed

That your hugs and hope
Will end in an embrace of gunpowder

That one million people
Can beat one million bullets
But all it will take is one bullet
To beat you, Michael

We have more in common
Than our four children
And our changed names

More than Nobel Peace Prize gossip
Cold jail cell floors
And an oppressed underclass

More than Henry David Thoreau
And cowards who are too afraid to die for anything
Calling us soft

I’m so sorry
I should have told you
That Civil Disobedience
Requires civility

Civility that is very hard to find
In a human race that
Swaddles its offspring in flag and pistol
One in the cradle
And launches them off to war

I should have told you
That all of our Walden’s
Would be warzones

That we won’t die of old age
Or Tuberculosis like Henry

That non-violent resistance
Ends differently for people with our color skin
There should have been another chapter
For us

We both got our start in public transportation
Not the Montgomery Bus Boycott that put you on American television
But the day YOU
Were made to give up your seat on a bus
Hours after you won a speaking contest at the Negro Elks Society
And you didn’t sit in the back
You stood in the aisle
The entire 90-mile trip home

Where all the white passengers around you
Including the one in your seat
Were made to stare at your pride and your pain

You were fourteen

I was twenty-four

When I was thrown off a train
For refusing to leave the first class cabin
In South Africa
Beaten by a stagecoach driver
For refusing to “make room”
For a European passenger

That same genetic defect in humans
That made them spit on and spear
Your precious Jesus, King

I called it
“A negation of civilization”
You called me John 10:16
Which reads.
I have other sheep, which are not of this fold

You called me “great soul”

You said,
“Christ showed us the way,
And Gandhi in India showed it could work.”
And I’m sorry
That they are not all like you

Sorry
That they will forget
That I am Hindu and Muslim Peace
When they are looking for someone to bomb

That they will forget
That you are a militant lover
The pacifist-aggressive pastor
Monday through Sunday Christian
When they are looking for someone to be

I preached satya and ahimsa
Harvested riverbeds of salt
From the faces of my brothers and sisters
While giving the middle finger to British law

You preached
Said if one thousand are locked up
There should be a thousand more waiting to fill their jail cells too
Said peace is not merely the absence of tension, 
it is the presence of justice.

And I’m sorry
Sorry, I didn’t tell you the rest
Sorry I didn’t tell you how tired I was
How tired you looked
At the end

How the press would ridicule you
When your peaceful protest exploded into to violence
How it would frustrate you
In a way that fasting and praying could not cure
How you could give a damn about how it would hurt your image
Because what was really taxing
Was how it broke your heart

Martin,
It’s the same heaven for lawyers and martyrs
There is no caste there
To separate those who live good lives
From those who live good legends

You could have just been a good father,
Husband, Pastor
Instead of King

I could have practiced law
Not dying for the cause

I should have told you the dirty little secret
That death
Is the only way out of making a hypocrisy of ourselves

That I was on the brink
Ready to duck tape the mouths of my fellow countrymen
Bickering over India and Pakistan
As the British smirked on their way out

And you
You were running out of other cheeks to turn

Sometimes,
Murder is the only way we leave in peace, Martin

He Ram

And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner
But I think you knew

For someone dead at half my age
You were always a quick study

And when you got back from India
You let me and the whole of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church know

On Palm Sunday

You said,
“God grant that we shall choose the high way.
Even if it will mean assassination, even if it will mean crucifixion,
For by going this way we will discover that death will be only the beginning of our influence.” 

© Hakim Bellamy January 17, 2013


From Mohandis K. Gandhi to Michael Luther King, Jr.

What I wish I would have said to the soldier this morning as we stared each other down for a three second eternity in the *Smith’s parking lot (AKA “Officer Smith” poem)

I wonder

if this is what it feels like

standing on the other end

of your rifle

or are your eyes always that big

and soft

would you take offense?

if I said

that you are the only part

of that uniform

that makes me proud to be an American

the only part

that my tax dollars didn’t pay for

the only part

that is free

Lady soldier

they will rename movies after you

An Officer and An Elegance

I want to make movies after

You

it is impossible to camouflage your beautiful

and this lap

I just drove around the parking lot

after you set your sights

felt like a tour of duty

too long

for me to get Army brave

work up your kind of courage

roll down this window and say:

“Ma’am,

has anyone ever told you that you are gorgeous?

Especially in that uniform.

I hope that is not disrespectful,

but just thanking you for your service

is not enough…”

on her inhale

and my breath away

a civil war broke out in my heart

there is nothing finer than a woman

in uniform

she stands like a mountain

a mythical creature

half God

half Gun

she smells like

all she hangs out with is boys

no perfume

she smells like

all she does is kill boys

no platoon

she looked at me

like she hasn’t seen a man

in a very, very

long time

and I’ve never seen anything like her before

never before

have I wanted to slowly unbutton a patriot

and draft her

throw my home training

and her “basic”

out the window

love her country

until my Egyptian sheets

turn into fatigues

let her honorably

desert her uniform

to the floor of my bedroom

where it sits

like a lifeless pile of flag

nose to neck

I will smell her

for the first time

filling this room with our scent

like milk and honey

remind each other that love

is the only thing worth fighting for

open our windows

and let every neighbor know

that THIS

is what nation building sounds like!

she is the centerfold of every

military issue

enough woman

to make a grown man die

and I just wanted to thank her

for her service

because I haven’t used the words

“God”

and

“America”

in the same sentence

in a very long time.

© Hakim Bellamy November 30th, 2012

*Smith’s is a Kroger Foods grocery chain in sunny Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Link: http://hakimbe.com/post/36899359514/what-i-wish-i-would-have-said-to-the-soldier-this

Officer Smith Poem (AKA "God Bless America")

Canary – hakim bellamy

“You can tell how far a society is going to go by how it treats its women and girls. And if they’re doing well, then the society is going to do well; and if they’re not, then they won’t be.” – Stanley Ann Dunham, mother of the 44th President of the United States

There is a coalmine
In Southern Illinois
Built, as recently as, 2006

With no bathrooms
Or changing facilities 
For female miners

She stands at the mouth of it
In a canary yellow dress
Waiting for America
To exercise its right
To shaft her

We are 33 years delinquent
On ratifying the UN Convention
On the Elimination of All Forms
Of Discrimination against women

Thanks to Senators
Who slept through Home Ec
Grown men,
Who actually believe
That vaginas
Have a “rape gag reflex”

Thanks to consecutive congresses
That bind women’s feet
To kitchen floors
With glass ceilings

From school girls
Who routinely outperform boys
K through post-secondary
Yet never achieve the same pay grade
On payday

Women who do two-thirds
Of the world’s work
And receive 10% of the world’s income

Who are never called ranchers
But produce 75% of global crops

Women who never reap
The spoils of harvest
Women who have children
And account for two-thirds of our poor

Women who feed faces
And still found time to vote
Once we let them

We are more than the right to vote
We are the right to bleed

We are the right to be a “Presidentess”
We are Victoria Woodhull
We are the right to lead.

We are Sojourner Truth
Ain’t I a woman? Indeed.

We gotta do better
Than Hilary Clinton
Needing two men to die
Before we put a female chief
On the face of our paper currency

We are the first Presidential votes
Cast for Belva Lockwood
We are Vigdís Finnbogadóttir
And Benazir Bhutto

We are places in America
Where women could run for office
Long before the 19th Amendment

Her selection
Solely subject to the approval of men
Like some sort of wet freedom (Free Shirt) contest

Went from being property
To polling places
Just like slaves

But somewhere far away
There are still old men
Voting over our dead bodies

We are kicking and screaming
Making a scene
And not heard
Like Emmeline Pankhurst
Outside of Buckingham Palace
Like Alice Paul
Outside the White House
And Woodrow Wilson’s front porch

We are not afraid of being arrested
We are terrified of not being counted

We are born arms
For babies and ballots
Even when we could not vote
We were the ONLY ones
That could reproduce people who could

We are plus chromosome
And minus a rib
We are two X’s
Are better than one
We are 2012
Not 1912

We are fighting
For our right to fight
For our right to die
Alongside husbands and brothers

Yes, we will fight
For poor wages and terrible working conditions, first.

So we can organize for better later

We are standing outside of a coalmine
In Marion, Illinois
That employs over 130 men
And has never hired a woman

Despite having
Overly qualified women apply
By the binders

We are standing at the mouth
Of a mine
In a canary yellow dress

Willing to work our way
Into the tomb 
With a warning:

“Dear Dress,
You are about to get 
Very, very
Dirty.”

© Hakim Bellamy November 18, 2012

Beat by Diles @ Visceral View Entertainment

Canary (Written for TEDxABQWomen 2012)

Stand: For Every Teacher I Ever Had or Hadn’t… – hakim bellamy

You stand,
somewhere between
who they are
and what they could be.

Not an obstacle.
Quite the contrary,
but they can’t tell.

Their only hint
is the way you stand.

You appear ready to fight
and dammit if sometimes…
they do not know it is for them.

You are hands down
while they are hands up
in front of you.

You take their best shot
and every ‘morrow
come back for more
please.

You are the space between
the end of every question
and good manners,

between a demand
and a smile,

between please and thank you,

between boredom
and the bathroom,

between bathroom and sh…
‘tuff we let pass for education in this country.

You stand between past
and fail,

between path
and learn

between pass
and future.

You stood between Dr. Maya Angelou
and her degree.

Her traumatic muteness at 8
and her ability to speak at 13.

Between Anne Sullivan
and Helen Keller’s ability to speak what she sees.

You stand between every single student
and their “Story of Me.”

Stood with Mary Duncan in Nashville, Tennessee,
between a 4th grade Oprah Winfrey
and THE “Oprah.”

And in 1989 you stood on her show
as she said thank you.

I thank you
for standing between the spike
and the punch bowl,

between the wallflower
and the wall,

between the two kids
getting a little too Lambada on the dance floor,

between the black board
and the clean slate,

between a paycheck
and a living,

between social promotion
and social skills,

between high stakes testing
and a high stakes life.

You stand
with a backpack

more camouflage
than campus.

Always at attention
even in a room full of pupils that lack it.

You are a frontline
of lesson plans waving sayonara from flagpoles
at half mast.

You are marching orders
that have accepted
to stand.

Between our lil’ angels
and the gunmen who have come
to give them wings.

Between neck
and bedroom closet.

Between bully
and believer.

You stand between a sensible work week
and beyond the call of duty,

between the drugs
and our children’s self-esteem,

between banned books
and burnt out,

and sometimes…
between the bar
and the weekend you desperately needed

like, like two days ago, already!

You are a Monday through Friday
stand-in parent for ME,
and for every moment you surrogate life
I am away on my knees
begging for you
and my child
to succeed.

For as long 
as you’ve been on your feet for me,
I will stand for you.

© Hakim Bellamy December 31st, 2012

Stand: For every teacher I ever had...or hadn't

Track 10 off of Hakim Bellamy's 2011 release "Be." Available at:

iTunes

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/my-generation/id416193291?i=416193295&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Be/dp/B004KEM2T4

DigSTATION

http://www.digstation.com/AlbumDetails.aspx?albumid=ALB000065719

AOL Music

http://music.aol.com/album/hakim-be/be/1730482

CD Baby

https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/hakimbe

Prohibition

Crea+ivi+y … for Mae Jemison

Quote

“For some reasons of reason, it is overwhelmingly apparent that the female brain does not rival a man’s brain when it comes to math and science.”

so she grabbed a telescope
to see
what kind of god
would not make space
for her

what kind of idiot
savant
would phrenologize uterus
with iQ
in a respectable scholarly journal
and call his self
scientist

an alchemist
is much more
than a palmful
of snake oil

more than scales
and skin sales

more than the atheism
we cook
and crack

in the crosshairs of that scope

she saw pimps
standing on the corner
of crea+ion and nativi+y

selling acrylic
on canvas, no prints,
of Mary
and manger

sky
blacker than universe
than womb

in it
stars look like asterisks
like X, X
on top of each other
one tick-tocked clockwise
90 degrees

“Like you don’t know what time it is!”
she says
under lapcoat collar

like impo’tent men
will put their dick in
test tubes to
try and reproduce
the laboratory inside of her

futile
those same men,
however important,
will fit firearms into mouths
of mothers
on a crusade
to barren nations

frustrated
that their black magic
will never match
her birthright…

they will say
“God made Adam first.”
She will thank’em kindly
for the compliment
and call herself 
evolution

smile
and tell them to adopt
while she adapts

“We are in clinical trials,
trying to reproduce a miracle.”
she belches

“The future of this species rests in an aberration.
Inconclusive, yet well-documented, evidence that one
Of their gender was able to regenerate without the other…”

she is between homo habilis 
and australopithicus 

she is time travel
nine months of present
and future
at the same time

she is pregnancy without penis
he is penis without progress

he is original man
primitive

she is Es-class
opposable thumb

she has made man
without man

he has tried
to clone her miracle
jealous
of how she plays god with herself

one day,
he will worship her
for the nucleus she is
instead of the warfare
he wet dreams her
to be

til then,
he will dismiss this report
file it away in the annals
of science

and tell her
this sort of study
this sort of research
is heresy

he will unbend
his lips and innuendo
his brow
as he lets her know
what is at stake

shrug it off
by trying to diffuse
a lawsuit
with a joke about sausage
and how she is
missing link

he is not
cute

or scientifically correct
he is cocky
not cunning

he is over the line
and over confident
she is over head
and over
it

he will discharge
one last shot
at her sisterhood

laughingly, ask her
if she thinks
she can fly

and she will
look him in the eye

and say
“Yes”

“Now,
ask me…
which broomstick
to prove it with.”

© Hakim Bellamy March 21, 2013


Crea+ivi+y ... for Mae Jemison

Change for TEDxCHANGE Clover Leaf (Albuquerque, NM)

We put people on crosses all the time
Cause we're afraid of it

Put fire at the foot of it
To make it late again

But it's gon’ come
Oh yes it will

Fists fold around pitchforks
And put a stake in it

Wouldn't waste a shout
On the mouths of the voiceless
Who can't afford to pay for it

Used to light bras on fire
Put fists in the air
AND peoples face for it

Because the truth is…

Sometimes 
People get eliminated
In the name of it

Sometimes
We're wardrobe lacking
And not enough of IT
is happening, everyday I'm sent packing
So seven days later, yeah
I'm wearing the same thing again

And other times
It's as simple as pumps and pants
But the 'rents want grands
Children never coming home
Because mom and dad are ashamed of it

But don't you worry
Because there's a "for the better"
With every "for the worse"
And every 15 years
There's another generation of it

And then they'll go to college
And look between couch cushions
And in political campaigns for it

They will accuse their elders
Of getting in the way of it
But forget that those Rotarians
Put a phone in our pocket
So we can say it with a frownie face on it

Made us
The headlines in each others’ newsfeeds
Now our waistlines are blue screened
Because we play different
Made the world so small
There’s no outside
So we inside
All day with it

There's few pages in our Guinness Book
The prove we went to the moon
Just to make space for it

Turn sunshine
Into docile fuel
If we're willing to brake for it

Diseases instead of people
That are going extinct
And I can't even pronounce
The medicinal name for it

So I guess
I'm just like the rest of my people
Who put their hands together
And pray for it

An 8 year-old
Somewhere near the equator
Calls this "Her fair shake"
Grateful
That she is finally able
to get a prosthetic leg from it

Found a way to 
Regenerate watersheds
Resurrect ecosystems
And repair the mistakes we made with it

There are even some
Enterprising young folk
Attempting to innovate the way we "get close"
Cause we're all
"Pro" - creation here!

Honest about human nature
Over centuries
And how the risks have evolved
But, the way we show love hasn't changed a bit

Even Pluto had a date with it
Now there's only 8 planets remaining
3rd rock from the sun
It's still the same

Waiting for the world to change
When we 
Are the ones changing it.

© Hakim Bellamy April 2, 2013 

www.hakimbe.com
www.beyondpoetryink.com

Change

Open E-mail … to the Future
written for the National Conference for Media Reform 2013

do you remember us?

before I wrote you letters like this
in cursive
and you told me
I was not your type

before b4
when your word
had vowels
and we
had promise
and should've kept both

when we were still stories

like the one Reverend Vivian still tells
about the preachers and their protest
the time we turned that jail cell
into a lowpower fm
turned us into a one hit wonder
and those ministers sang us over and over again
even after they were told to shut up

otra vez

even after they were told they'd lose their mattresses

otra vez

even after they were mattress-less

they sang us again
do you remember when
we spelled "I love you"
with ten songs, a cassette, a piece of tape
and a sharpie

wrote "possible wedding songs" on it
scratched that
and wrote "I like you a lot vol. 1"

and he gave it to her
and she gave one to her
and he gave one to him
and they all had the same ten songs on it

back when we thought
the digital revolution meant 5 finger
instead of fist

back when music "gigs"
meant something different
back when we couldn't fit a library of songs in our pocket
but we could in our heart

back when we
actually had to remember phone numbers
and stop and ask for directions

instead of bitching at google maps
and still having to stop and ask for directions

back when we had to admit
that we were lost
that we didn't know it all

you remember

when it was 
the satanic static
in the wax
that charmed daddy into drunk dancing
instead of damage

when we used to cozy up
to the snap, crackle,  pop
of the radio just to keep warm

when the walls between family members
started wearing moving pictures
to give the illusion of spending time together

remember when knowing what buttons
NOT to push prevented distance and silence
and now it just prevents silence

when weak night meant
gather round the table for
tv dinner with tv parents
and grace went like this
"at least we're not hungry & orphaned"
thank God for the Huxtables
and both mom's jobs

when Neil Armstrong landed on the boob
when the Challenger moonwalked and moonwalked and moonwalked
on Instant Replay

when space stations started beaming
stardust to our rooftops
to remind us that WE
are radiant

when gamma rays only meant one thing
and it was not catching cancer from your cellphone
just like Lou Ferrigno
forever worried about how big
when we should've been worried about how green

remember when super bowl commercials didn't suck

when one bully was enough
but her smartphone is more socially awkward than her
so she keeps a gang in her pocket
that pummels her where it won't leave bruises
until it mega hurts

this e-mail will self-destruct
if the colonizers keep trying to plantation the Internet

the airwaves are no place for a slaveship
the people think they are free
when they are the cash crop

remember when we said we would
railroad this superhighway under the ground
before we let them take us
Pandora an old negro spiritual station
to pirate information
with Dr. King broomsticking morse code
underneath the beat when it's his turn to speak

remember that we 
are the 1st amendment
the only industry protected by law
the lifeblood of the republic
protecting democracy
since long before Ben Franklin went postmaster general

how could you forget
our endangered languages?
native tongue severed
newspaper noosed…
since the telephone is extinct
I wrote you this by hand
worth more to you now as a collectors item
quaint as a stamp
before postage cost an arm
and a laptop

you can't forget.

the names of dead homies
haunt the address book on your phone
their Facebook page a shrine

re-live Newtown in pictures on a screen
and call it therapy
so you don't have to re-live flashes in your mind
and call it PTSD

I wish I was still a piece of paper
not this immortal
this god 
corporations are trying to bottle and make a wish

than at least I could be burned
and people would tether together around me again
hands held

the light I'd produce
would be warm, not blue
but temporary

and they'd read each others' face
for real
for once
for ever

and then 
they'd sing.

© Hakim Bellamy April 5, 2013
 


Open E-mail To The Future for #NCMR13

Written for the One Million Bones project to raise awareness and stop genocide. Delivered at the installation on the National Mall in Washington DC on June 8th, 2013.
www.onemillionbones.org

For One Million Bones – by hakim bellamy

There has been
no moment
in human history
when remember
meant replace

there is no milk carton
big enough
to miss all of us

no grave
mass enough
for our grief

survivor
does not mean victor
it means alone
left

it is the answer we deserve
but never get
to the question
“What makes me so special?”

it is a village
of “I can’t quite put my finger on it”
full of wave-less windows
with only widows unexpecting

full of orphaned orifices
that know not the joy 
of hide & seek
because there’s no surprise
that’s coming to get them

the kind of damage
that hurricanes would wink
and tornadoes would flinch

we are what is left
after we lose our humanity
and become our own natural disaster

we are comforting
A blanket of body parts covering Mother Earth
When she is shivering
A million people colder
A billion souls lighter
While we are eyes heavy
With hearts that weigh a ton

We are walking trauma
Our ice age of isolation
Dinosauring each other
Until our parentless children’s children
Fossil us carnivores

We resist this
Legacy of loneliness
Will no longer bury loved ones
Without resurrecting love

We will Frankenstein
Our flaws and our faith
Across the National Lawn
Harvest lessons from it
In broad sunlight

Fill the holes left in our community
With machetes and missiles
Guns and gas chambers
Bury them with our sins

Connect beings by bone
Put people together,
hand by hand

murdering one
makes a massacre of a million
killing any one of us
kills us
all

mother earth
is still shivering
in our bones

I know
Because I can feel you
In my marrow
I can see us
In her morrow

Smells like climate change
But only when it rains

We are not survivors
We are the same

© Hakim Bellamy, June 8, 2013


HakimBe

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