Little Sacred Song (LSS LXXV)

LSS LXXV

Call Him fake! That bait I would not take!

Make your peace by craving all that’s fake

And to your face I will sing to you

Without fear you are a shame times two

For you trample underfoot His Name

Free of stain with thoughts and claims of fame

And knowing he does not His work do

For such as to His faith He is True

As I hold fast to my refusal

Of mud slings at my divine royal

From you or any who with putrid

Slurs try to drag down the slums and rid

My world of light shining from His Heart

To guide my steps for His my shepherd.

Curled from Bill F. Ndi ©2013 Little Sacred Songs 

Anthem for Essingang

O, macaroon covered with poor chicks' feathers

Go sit down and pride yourself in thievery

Like the slums your disgraceful flag shall fly

With your havoc to your name ever true

My father's house that once all tongue could tell

Has now become a house of thieves

So the rest of the world can see

The emblem of the tears of our people





Clan of mbokos, clan of bandits

With death and sadness in our store

Thine be disgrace, thine be great shame

And repudiation for evermore....


Curled from, Bleeding Red: Cameroon in Black and White

My New Baby & Preface by Pr. Ken Wilburn!

Preface by Dr. Kenneth Wilburn, Department of History, East Carolina University

The authors of this provocative book explore distinctions of individual and group belonging, as well as manifestations of not belonging. Written for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and those seeking knowledge about the complexity of identity, Fears, Doubts and Joys of not Belonging examines variations of imposed and self-imposed alienation. Ndi, Ankumah, and Fishkin explore the rich historiography of estrangement in fiction and non-fiction to demonstrate the universality, timelessness, and varieties of alienation. For example, Muslim leaders like Nana Asma’u of the Sokoto Caliphate disseminated educational poems of inclusiveness to the Africans of Gobir alienated by conquest. In contrast, Europeans who organized the Atlantic slave trade sought power and material wealth through mechanisms of intimidation and force that resulted in widespread hopelessness and exclusion. Both groups were victims of alienation, but those of the caliphate were invited in language they understood to participate inside the new society; those who survived the Middle Passage were addressed in languages they did not understand, transformed into chattel, and kept outside settler societies.

Thus, whether inclusive or exclusive in nature, alienation can be imposed, as heretics have often been painfully reminded by the orthodox. Yet alienation can also be willful, as Christian and Sufi ascetics have frequently demonstrated. In this book’s ten chapters, the authors seek balance in our understanding of estrangement by asserting that joy can also come out of willful alienation. From that half-filled glass of life’s serendipity one can often drink just as deeply of joy as one can of despair. This is what Steve Biko meant when he wrote about Black Consciousness, about discovering joy in one’s identity. Alienation can be transformed from a lock into a key to open the collective Global African in us all. Fears, Doubts and Joys of not Belongingmoves forward that recent scientific discovery.

Madiba

Madiba

We are gathering again in Soweto

Soweto where Biko lives

‘cause only silt has flowed our away

‘cause babies didn’t die to live in shanties

the gold and diamonds they have stashed

while the black betty bourgeois drive audis

on dust filled roads that pollute our hopes and dreams.

Madiba

We are gathering again in Sharpesville

‘cause the dogs are in the suites

sipping   moet and chandon

while our passes and blood

are but memories in their sordid minds

while our mothers’ lamentations  lit rooms perfumed with cigars

where evil eyes lust for flesh

where evil eyes undress the undressed bodies

where dark secrets are whispered of money stashed.

Madiba

We are gathering again on Robben Island

‘cause the monsters have turned the guns on the people

‘cause the rainbow is only an lllusion

an illusion for two dollars a pay day

an illusion for putrid water and shanties for homes.

Madiba

we are gathering again in Johannesburg

‘cause Mariam Makeba is wailing

‘cause Hugh Masekela  is trumpeting

‘cause Johnathan Butler is humming

‘cause Ladysmith Black Mambazo is howling

They are wailing, trumpeting, humming, and howling a new song

A new song  of freedom

A new song of liberation

A new song of emancipation

A new song of transformation.

Madiba

We are gathering again

All over Azania

The land where we want to roam free

The land where we want to nurture the baobab tree

‘cause ‘Umkhonto we Sizwe” is broken

‘cause “Umkhonto we Sizwe” is broken.

 Godfrey Cymande

© 12/11/2013

For Red Hand Entertainment

My latest Baby

Outward Evil Inward Battle: Human Memory in Literature

Outward Evil Inward Battle: Human Memory in Literature is a timely humanistic touch to memory studies. It uses literature as a laboratory for the workings of the mind, and characters as the subjects of human experimentation and diagnostics. This book considers authors from different societies and historical periods. The book is a refreshing illumination on the functioning of human memory. It complements the work of neuroscientists who seek to rationalize the workings of the same.

Drawing from various ideas on memory, this rich and authoritative volume results from wide-ranging endeavors centered on the common fact that tracking memory in literature provides an astounding vista of orientations covered in its separate chapters. The writers examined in the various chapters become mediums for unleashing memory and its reconfiguration into artistic images. The eleven separate chapters investigate different aspects of memory in such memoric associations as power, music, resistance, trauma, and identity. It is therefore no surprise that the editors should consider this book as “a veritable menu for everything needed for an unforgettable memory banquet”.

Ma Belle

Douce France,

Douce France

Rassure-moi !

Lance le moi !

Tu es belle !

Tu es belle !

Tu le sais comme le monde d’ailleurs

Mais ton cœur est plutôt ailleurs

C’est l’Afrique

Le Rustique

Qui te donne palpitation et compagnie

Que nous avons cherchées jusqu’à Taverny

Pour nous faire vibrer le chœur

Sans souci du rire moqueur.

Cette Afrique vous fait vibrer

En elle tous vous trouverez

Même ce qui manque chez votre maman

C’est bien cette danse qu’on veut également.

N’a-t-on pas dégusté les contes

De la belle et la bête que racontent

Ces livres assoiffés de la moquerie ?

Seul, le notre sera des pleurs enrichi !

Grâce à ce T effacé de Paris

Difficul Té de trouver un Pari

En France

En transe !