Fata Morgana (Bey)
They say they’ve touched the moon,
But the sun is forev-er.
Those are not stars you see,
But other worlds in forev-er.
Ever. Ever.
Split and conquered atoms make the man.
The answers don’t always matter,
Earth doesn’t wear out the space
Of its orbit like a pair of sneakers.
Toddlers with faces of senior citizens
At a certain speed. Morning explains
Its impish charms, the slight of multiple hands.
Secret equals glamour and this too is molecular:
Mists of energy, certain quantities speaking in
The tongue of whispers, ones and zeros and all that shit.
Speaking the names and the attributes,
The myths and the legends where everything is angel.
Everything is math and rock and water.
Iris, pupil, cornea, retina, this is what we call sky.
The imagination’s imagination, there are no known universes.
I see what you mean. The green of trees rushes by
In a blurry heat. It seems so easy to be free,
Alerted to the devil in the crowd, the accusatory glance.
Everything has an appetite. Everything has an appetite. |
Hymn to Memory (Sun Ra/Bey)
Quickly, inside the door;
Greet you, depart:
That’s how memory seems…
Years have no meaning
Minutes and hours
Days and years,
All the same…
There is no time in memory’s realm.
Yesterday?
Last year?
When did I see you last?
Oh I know:
Quickly, inside the door
Greet you,
Goodbye…
That’s what memory says for days and hours
2)
I always felt and
I always feel
That chance and circumstance
Of earth-bound life is nothing real.
It is not real
This life they live
Even and what
It has to give.
It is not real
This angel’s folly
By heck! By Jove!
By gosh! By golly! |
It’s About To Fall(Bey)
Give us your huddled masses
Give us your bad asses
Send them all unto me
Shake the monkeys from the tree
We will lord over the horde
Spread ‘em across the board
And when they arrive in waves
They will want to be our slaves
They can buy many things
While they swim in the blings
They’ll become a nation
Built on medication… ever on vacation
When after a while
With that permanent, prozac smile,
They will ask for more
We will send their sons to war
(and their daughters to whore)
it’s about collateral damage
it’s about
it’s about wall street plunging into darkness
it’s about
it’s about that flat screen TV, latest DVD, blind can’t see
it’s about
it’s about wakin’ up from dat matrix dream
it’s about
it’s about pandemonium in the cranium
it’s about
it’s about exercise right between the eyes
it’s about
it’s about rage against the machine
it’s about
it’s about the Black Diaspora body count since Jamestown
it’s about
it’s about reparation for the Afro nation
it’s about
it’s about killin’ the master’s voice inside yo head!
it’s about
it’s about where’s the fuckin’ plane at the pentagon?
it’s about
it’s about the resurgence of the city-state
it’s about
it’s about operation Falcon
it’s about
it’s about reading New Orleans, really
it’s about
it’s about lithiumated water
it’s about
it’s about freedom from freedom and democracy
it’s about
it’s about Rumsfeld carrying that stretcher
it’s about
it’s about Christ the Crusader
it’s about
it’s about Americanischer neuer reich
it’s about
it’s about 9/11 tabula rasa for the money men
it’s about
it’s about Africa’s absence in the foto of globalization
it’s about
it’s about the destruction of history
it’s about
it’s about get ready ‘cause it’s come to an end
it’s about
it it it it’s about to fall
it it it it’s about to fall y’all
|
New Akh Naten (CCRU/Bey)
According to Lemurian demonism,
Each demon is itself a swarm,
Or singular coalescence, but also a component of a larger array,
Which can be sorted by type.
The three principle demonic groupings are Chronodemons
(varieties of distance within the time-circuit),
Amphidemons (ruptures in the time-circuit, openings to the Outside),
And Xenodemons (denizens of the outer gulfs).
Demons are also grouped by phase
(defined by initial net-span digit).
Each phase is opened by a door,
To which is attributed a domain,
A planetary affinity, and a spinal level.
Demons can be characterized by the various rites
(routes, or routines) that they draw through the hyper-time of the maze.
There is a rite for each way in which the net-span of a demon
Can be integrated in extension
(or traced across the flows of the numogram).
Such rites are the basic components of demon traffic,
Constituting modules of practical culture,
Each of which is associated with an omen, and a power.
I tried to find you. I tried to find you there.
I can't do what I need to without you.
No Satisfaction (Sun Ra/Bey)
If you do wrong
You have to pay
But, if you do right
You have to pay too.
Also, if you do nothing
You have to pay
You went to the river
To cleanse your soul
When was the last time
You looked in the mirror? (repeat)
You can go to jail
For doing wrong.
You can go to jail
For doing right.
You can go to jail
For doing nothing…
Now you know.
Did we not know?
Did we not know?
That all things that were spoken, were so.
And all of the things that were written were so
All things were thought were so
Now every so is equal so
So plus so plus so is sow.
There’s something in the cosmos called
Fellowship, reach for it!
You keep lying to yourself
You can’t get no satisfaction
You keep hiding from your self
You won’t have no satisfaction
All the money in the world
Won’t give you satisfaction. (repeat) |
Osiris in the Field (Bey)
As strange as it seems today
There’s a very old connection
As the mystery unfolds
In the song of resurrection
Osiris is in the field
Distributed in sections
But, Isis saved the day
Performing resurrection.
They were so afraid of the Sphinx,
Napoleon tried to kill it,
The ancient turquoise links,
They even tried to steal it.
Osiris in the field (repeat)
So many parts of you
So many stars of you
Osiris! |
Ring the Schnartglitzer/Sonnet XXVI
OF LOVE IN A DEAD VISION (Cavalcanti)
Nay, when I would have sent my verses to thee
To say how harshly my heart is oppressed,
Love in an ashen vision manifest
Appeared and spake: "Say not that I foredo thee,
For though thy friend be he I understand
He will not yet have his mind so enured
But that to hear of all thou hast endured,
Of that blare flame that hath thee 'neath its hand,
Would blear his mind out. Verily before!
Yea, he were dead, heard, life, ere he should hear
To the last meaning of the portent wrought.
And thou; thou knowest well I am Amor
Who leave with thee mine ashen likeness here
And bear away from thee thine every thought."
(Translated by Ezra Pound) |
Spook (Bey)
I take my magic wand in hand
And touch the mind of the world.
I speak in sounds
A microscopic eye. an eye of liquid, an eye of bone...a blazing eye, an Unblinking eye. dream has its own brain and blood...its own air and sun. Its own blackness flung from the back of a vulture in the blackest night. So many systems so many orbits. It is I command it. Production in dream. The objects within the dream. A blazing sun crashing down upon the sands. A choir wave of a million angel's tiny feet inhabit dream or the kingdom of chlorophyll. Approaching both sides of the dreaming universe, the mirrored continuum, a multiple night painted green. I am a shadow cast upon the unfolding forest...every frond in the jungle, its own index of dreams. Dream fetishes itself within itself! This I have commanded. This I have adorned. This have endured. To find my earthly mansion machine. The insisting light, the barbaric light...and we are cut from the cloth of dream: the hush and tremble of dream earth beneath our feet. I must claim all of my appearances, all of my portals, all my rain. The ultimate shock of the variables, the great invisibles, I cross my arms and rise from the coffin. I stand erect and cast my shadow. Dream personifies the activity of the divination board. Cracking the kola nut. Feeding the deities. An offering of clear water and sugar cane . I am the eye watching myself and my family...dream is made of frequency wave upon illuminated wave. The picture quickens and dream does not resign against the waking, against the light. The brutal eye. The not so friendly presence. The dark quotient. Dream is heaven! As above so below.... In the formidable language of dream we elect ourselves to be prisoners of climate, of dream's weather, heaven's scent and the Olodus ranking: eji-ogbe, oyeku-meji, iwori-meji, irosun-meji, eka-meji, owanrin-meji, ogunda-meji, osa-meji, etura-meji, irete-meji, eka-meji,
2)
We dispatch what we discern to
Be ordinary, only to come up empty handed.
Dresler's wallet is the size of gargantua!
Cornucopic in his array payoffs: money, golems,
Voodoo dolls; he's got it all. Methods to
Ensnare my recalcitrance.
I want you to be all things to me. (repeat)
He pays off my network. invades my projects.
His disguises. The art of treachery! Allusions to
The tricks of the traitors as "best for all concerned."
Absence is no the reduction of being.
Absence is a weapon against revision.
der schwartzegeist negates Herr Dresler's
Ridiculous intrigues.
(from The False Diaries of Wifredo Lam)
|
Trees/lotus (Papyrus of Ani)
As if I'd slept a thousand years underwater I wake into a new season.
I am the blue lotus rising.
I am the cup of dreams and memory opening - I, the thousand-petaled flower.
At dawn the sun rises naked and new as a babe;
I open myself and am entered by light.
This is the joy, the slow awakening into fire as one by one the petals open,
as the fingers that held tight the secret unfurl.
I let go of the past and release the fragrance of flowers.
I open and light descends, fills me and passes through,
Each thin blue petal reflected perfectly in clear water.
I am that lotus filled with light reflected in the world.
I float content within myself, one flower with a thousand petals,
One life lived a thousand years without haste,
One universe sparking a thousand stars,
One god alive in a thousand people.
If you stood on a summer's morning on the bank under a brilliant sky,
You would see the thousand petals and say that together they make the lotus.
But if you lived in its heart, invisible from without,
You might see how the ecstasy at its fragrant core gives rise to its thousand petals. What is beautiful is Always that which is itself in essence, a certainty of being.
I marvel at myself and the things of earth.
I float among the days in peace, content. Not part of the world,
The world is all the parts of me.
I open toward light and lift myself to the gods on the perfume of prayer.
I ask for nothing beyond myself. I own everything I need.
I am content in the company of god, a prayer that contains its own answer.
I am the lotus. As if from a dream, I wake up laughing. |