next lifetime

i died this morning and couldn’t wake up. tossing and turning, gasping for life, i opened my eyes and found myself breathless, walking with her on the moon. among the angels. i moved to speak and her fingers rose to my mouth to hush my lips. she drifted closer to me and whispered in my ear a secret chant. she told me to remember the melody, for it was a magic spell to cast down babylon.

building a nu amerykah

∞

As my homestate rounds the homeplate in the campaign to put the “messenger of hope” on the november ballot, i ask for all buckeye voters to cast their ballots with spirit-filled intention. It is the intention of the class of 2012 to build a nu amerykah. We ohioans want to make the river valley a safe and sacred space for the youth. Mothers and fathers in badu’s homestate of texas surely want the very same thing for their little cowboys and girls.

We are doing this whole voting thing to show a little bit of solidarity, but don’t get it twisted we also do a little bit of praying.

the class of 2012

We grew up in a warzone. The war on drugs and the war on terror. It was too dangerous outdoors so we played inside, in front of the big screen. Ironically, there were 1000 times as many violent deaths on the telly than there were outside. Thanks to 24-hour marathons of Law and Order, twenty-four people were murked in our living rooms every day. When we weren’t eye-witnessing a shoot-em-up, we were watching corporate warfare. The networks battled for our attention so that they could distribute Power Wheels, Beenie Babies and Fruity Pebbles. We didn’t choose between them. We bought all three. The first Jordans came out before we was born, but that didn’t stop us from buying them when the retros re-released. We laced them