06.12.10
Posted in Africa and Africans, Sport at 1:13 am by IBé
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.
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06.02.10
Posted in Environment, Essays, Politics at 7:00 pm by IBé
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.
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03.31.10
Posted in General, Poems, spoken word at 3:06 am by IBé
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: Read the rest of this entry »
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01.13.10
Posted in Essays, Religion at 11:52 pm by IBé
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.” Read the rest of this entry »
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11.10.09
Posted in Arts, Essays at 9:32 pm by IBé
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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09.24.09
Posted in Poems, spoken word at 9:47 pm by IBé
Like many men,
When it comes to women,
I love that which I cannot have.
I’m in love with distance, you see;
Unbridgeable distance:
When she is over there;
Across the ocean
In a country with bad phone service;
I love her. Read the rest of this entry »
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08.19.09
Posted in Africa and Africans at 10:16 pm by IBé
By: Gerald Montgomery
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 presume 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. Read the rest of this entry »
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08.10.09
Posted in Poems at 8:19 pm by IBé
I seem to be 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 quick as possible. Just to proof 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
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Posted in Arts at 7:02 pm by IBé
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.
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05.04.09
Posted in Africa and Africans, Environment, Politics at 8:07 pm by IBé
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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