It’s time for some football!! No, not that football. I’m talking about the real FOOTball. You know, the one that is actually played with feet, the one that is kicked; most enduring, most athletic, most entertaining, undisputed most popular sport in the world! The one the US has never, and chances are don’t stand a chance to be crowned “World Champion” anytime soon. Yeah, that one.
And since I am talking about it, you know Africa is in the midst of it. No, scratch that, Africa is in the center of it. This week begins the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and all eyes (literally) are on South Africa as it becomes the first African nation to host the games. This time Africa will grace headlines all over the world, and for once it will not be because of some calamity that has befallen my people....more
BP Oil Spill, a Consequence Million Years in the Making
How long has it been since a British Petroleum (BP) pen-pusher showed up on an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico? How long since he pushed his untrained ideas on the technicians on the rig? How long since the technicians relented and gave in to his demands? How long since the first explosion? How long since 11 went missing (aka dead)? How long since the huge plume of smoke shut to the heavens? How long since the second explosion? How long since the rig sank to the bottom of the ocean? How long since the robots were dispatched, since they found two “small” leaks (as oppose to spills)? How long since 1,000 barrels a day became 5,000 became 20,000 barrels a day? How long since the current set its sight on the gulf coast—New Orleans, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, maybe Texas. Could Mexico be next? The Caribbean nations? How long since it finds its way to the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Arctic, Antarctic, blanket the world? I’m going off the deep end? Well, the pipe is still “leaking”, spewing oil into the ocean, and still all we have are estimates. And if we have learned anything so far, when it comes to this spill, estimates are like you-know-what, everybody has one. And most are unreliable.... more
Middle Class Blues
--Because over half of Twin Cities' Foodshelf visitors are employed.
There is a fire at the fire house
Run run run
More than a warning song
This is a mourning song
Sung before the pallbearers come
Boat people
With pails in hands
Trying to weather the storm
In a world of lost wages
We make the same
So we labor through breathing
And thank the world
For our tightening collars: ...more
Last Fridays
Since I closed it over a year ago, many people have asked me what happened to SouLs on disPlay open mic. In all honesty I don't know. I guess I got tired and burnt out. Finally, I think I'm well rested, and now ready to give it a go again. So this here is the open mic, with a different name, different venue, different set up, the same old good time! Finally something for your soul and body!
Featured in AIM Magazine
God and Haiti
I am not religious, but I consider myself highly spiritual. I truly believe in the existence of a higher being. How S/He plays in our lives is what has always been fuzzy to me. The more I try to makes sense of it, the more confused I am. So when I logged on Facebook yesterday and saw this status update from my brother -in-law, I couldn’t agree more: “sometimes i wonda whether God realy tkes care of da poor especialy wen i hear about earthquakes in Haiti bcuz i tink those guys need a break.” (more…)
Fragility
I stayed up late over this
Sat and prayed over it
Finally got some sleep, woke up but found no way around it:
We live a predictably unpredictable life
Between the tic and the toc
And we are no clock makers
We mass on the door steps of hell
And don’t even know it
Rejoice in a thousand virgins
But this is far from heaven
We think we are on solid grounds
But planets float for a reason
We stand on egg shells
Yet we insist on dancing
We are newborns with razor nails
Scratching at a paper world
At the twilight of day
We turn our backs on the moon
We believe the sun will last forever
But God is a juggler
We all know how that goes
Eventually something falls
We are too fragile
We break every time
This is It - Film Review
This afternoon, with my 8 year old daughter in tow, I finally saw “Michael Jackson’s This is it”. The film was all that I hoped it would be. And more. It was Michael Jackson at his usual; meaning it was entertainment at its best. In sum, 50 years old, at the door front of his death, Michael still had it. In fact, in some takes during this documentary of a rehearsal, he seemed as fluid as he did ten and twenty years ago. Perhaps a feat due to the fact that the Michael in those scenes was not Michael Jackson. Many people have complained about the use of body doubles in the film, but it hardly bothered me. Maybe because I had Michael in mind, any images I saw on screen that was staged to be him, I received as him wholeheartedly. Adoration is blinding, I know. (more…)
So, I got a Nikon D5000 for my birthday, and now I'm learning my next hobby. I took it along to B Girl Be this past weekend. Hope you like them.
In The Balance
My Dear African Brother,
Have you at anytime in your life (here in America) felt it necessary, convenient or beneficial in anyway to emphasize that you were African as opposed to allowing someone to assume or continue to assume you were African-American, if even for a moment? No need to elaborate if you wish to answer and no need to answer if you wish not to, as long as you know this question is coming from your African-American brother who loves you dearly and only intends to lay the foundation of his argument. Just think about it is all I really need you to do. (more…)
Black at the (MN) Opera
Yesterday, I went to the Opera for the first time. 45 minutes late. At Orchestra Hall in downtown Minneapolis, as I walked toward and past the sea of white heads, I thought I didn’t belong. Why do I let curiosity bring me to situations like these, I scolded myself. But we followed the usher to our seat, and this my latest entry into this American life. (more…
Three Little Poems
I seem to be in a very deep writer’s block I can’t seem to swim out of. So I visited some poems I once upon a time started writing on my PDA. I think I had some lofty ambitions for them, but this time around I just wanted to end them as quickly as possible. Just to prove to myself I can still finish a thought. If they don’t make sense, it’s probably because in actuality they are incomplete. But if I can leap, I would like to think of them as complete thoughts having incomplete dreams.
HyeNas
Oh yes
I laugh:
Path my lips
Show my teeth
Smack my belly
And force a sound (more…)
Somalia: Pirates or Patriots of the Sea?
By Alie Kabba
It is disheartening, once again, to see the butchery of truth by an oversimplification of complex phenomena in a place that has become a metaphor for the grave ills of post-colonial Africa – Somalia.
As we say out here, don’t believe the hype! Or, as Bob Marley and the Wailers succinctly put it, half the story has never been told.
Let’s get through the debris of Gaza, the wasteland of Eastern Congo and the blighted plains of Darfur to get to the facts about Somalia and the Great Pirate Threats to Western Civilization as we know it. (more…)
A New Development Aid Model
Recently I was introduced to an upcoming book on development (or lack thereof) in Africa that caught my attention like few books have in the past. In her book, Dead Aid, the Zambian economist, Ms. Dambisa Moyo adds her voice to the bold conclusion that foreign aid to Africa is doing more harm than good, that it is in fact one of many obstacles to development in Africa. Without getting into details (I have yet to read the book), I find myself in complete agreement. The fact of the matter is, no matter the good intention of the donors, only fractions of aid to Africa actually go to the causes intended. If and when they do, they provide at best Band-Aid solutions to chronic issues with roots far deeper than the headlines. But how do you tell good Samaritans not to stop when they see one of God’s angels by the side of the road? (more…
The Price of Not Looking "American"
Maybe it’s because my own mother is losing her mind to the same wicked disease, but I just read a story about an old lady that just broke my heart.
As the story goes, back in 1994, a mute elderly woman was found wondering a mall in New Jersey. When the police picked her up, she didn’t have any identification on her person, and in addition to being mute, she was found to be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. For 15 years all attempts to identify her returned nothing. Not fingerprinting, not police investigation, not photo circulation…nothing could yield her identity. So where would you suppose she was kept for all 15 years? Not in a nursing home, as you would suspect counting her condition. The poor sick old lady (always well dressed according to witnesses) was sent to live in a psychiatric hospital. Yes, that is right, among mentally diseased individuals. Don’t get me wrong, Alzheimer is also a mental disease, but there is a difference between it and psychotic. (more…)
Recently, I stopped by the Artists' Quarter's monthly "Soap-Boxing" Slam to have some fun with the poets. Here's the winning poem. Read the text
For more on Minnesota's spoken word/poetry slam community click on over to Minnesota Microphone.
Maybe it’s because my own mother is losing her mind to the same wicked disease, but I just read 
